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Washington In War Times 

A Series of Articles Published in The Detroit News, 
July 29— August 22, 1918. 



By W. J. CAMERON, 
Detroit News Staff. 



Published by The Detroit News, Detroit, Mich., 1918. 



Qitt 
Publisher 
JUN 2 I92Q 



1\ 510 

• ? s 

.IibC3 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

^' ' ' " Page. 
Washington— The New Capital of the World 4 

A Visit to President Wilson 7 

The Great Purpose — America's World Program 13 

How the Government Dealt With the Spy 17 

Mobilizing Against the Interior Enemy 21 

Damming Up American Sources of German Wealth 25 

Another Interior Enemy — The Profiteer . 31 

The Secretary of War at Close Range 37 

Some Achievements of tJie Army 41 

The Man Who Made the Selective Draft 46 

Analyzing the Army's Man-Power 50 

The Chief-of-Staff— Commander of All Our Millions 54 

"The Swivel Chair Army" 60 

Gen. Gorgas Wages War of Extermination 64 

How Military Morale Is Maintained 68 

Interviewing the Secretary of the Navy 72 

The Navy Was Ready to Fight! 77 

Mobilizing the American Mind 81 

How Our Alien-Born Help Win the War 85 

Mobilizing American Business 90 

Holding the Workshop Sector 94 

Mobilizing Morality and Religion 100 



-3— 



Washington— The New Capital of the World 

WASHINGTON, July 29.— "For the first tirne since the Civil War 
the city of Washington is, in reality as well as in name, the capital of 
the United States." 

This was said to me by a member of President Wilson's Cabinet,^ 
and was elicited by a remark concerning the tremendously intense war 
activities which center here. And though that point of view has obvi- 
ous limitations, the statement is true. 

This city is the front office of the nation at war. Here power re- 
sides and commands emanate. Though far from comprising the United 
States or containing within itself even a measurable portion of the 
potentialities of the country, it is the national conference room from 
which run lines of counsel and compulsion that co-ordinate the com- 
plex life of the nation and bring it to bear on the central task. 

The responsible head of the whole colossal undertaking of war 
sits in a modest white house behina a park of trees; to right and left 
of him, never more than a few squares away, are his chiefs of war and 
finance and industry; and from these chiefs radiate to every city and 
four-corners of the Republic, through the medium of a vast army of 
officials and employes and voluntary helpers, the bewildering maze of 
lines of control and inspiration which could be neither numbered nor 
named in less than cyclopedic space. 

In Washington one begins to understand what the President meant 
when he said he had frequently to remind himself that this city was 
not the country, that sometimes it did not even reflect the mind of the 
country. He said he found the southern windows of the White House; 
useful to him because they looked out of Washington, across the 
Potomac, to the Virginia hills, and then beyond to the heavens them- 
selves. And while it is truer now than at any other time that the mind 
of the_ country is the mind of the Capital, there is quite enough in this 
historic city to take one's mind for the moment off the United States. 

The city itself is, of course, transformed. Not in any sense a large 
city as American cities go, its population has been augmented by 100,000 
people who have been called to work and live here by the exigency of 
war. Normally, at this time of the year Washington is like a college 
town in vacation. Two-horse coaches with their darkey drivers and 
their tasseled, cream-colored sunshades moved leisurely about the 
streets in the shadows of the sycamore trees, which everywhere abound. 
Life had a pleasant flavor of Southern gentility; the traditions of 
Virginia and Maryland were dominant. 

But now the city buzzes from dawn until midnight, not with social 
fuss, which is almost entirely absent, but with urgent business. The 
leisurely family coach has given way to the rushing motor car — "non- 
essentials," as Detroit Congressmen call them, in jocular reference to 
the plan that would restrict their manufacture. However "non- 
essential" the passenger automobiles may have been dubbed in offered 
legislation, they are so extremely essential here that they are parked 
five_ deep around every department, and it is virtually impossible to 
achieve a day's work without them. 

The transformation has touched the city's natural features. Some 
of the beautiful parks have been commandeered for new Government 
buildings — not the stately type of edifice with columned marble facade 
which lends itself to souvenir booklets, but long wooden barracks lined 
with plaster-board partitions, only a little more sightly than the 
barracks of the cantonments. Blocks and blocks of these structures 
blotch the view in Washington, and more blocks and blocks are under 
construction. 

—4— 



Out through the fashionable avenues of the city, great residences 
and apartment houses have been commandeered by the score. I have 
interviewed officials who have set up their offices in butler's 



WORK CROWDS IN EVERYWHERE. 

In the massive department buildings of ordinary times, the work has 
overflowed into the corridors, which are lined with desks and filled 
with clerks at work, while the upstairs halls are hardly passable 
because of the offices which have been set up in them. Cellars and 
attics and lawns have become hives of activity. As indicating the 
pressure of business on space, consider the fate of the diplomatic 
reception room in the Department of State. In this room with its 
black mahogany, blue upholstered furniture many notable scenes have 
occurred, many great treaties have been signed. It is a room one 
would visit for its associations. Yet today it is squarely cut across 
with a plaster-board partition; dignity has had to give way to utility. 

And by night the work continues. Lights flash from the windows 
of the departments, and through the open doors comes the incessant 
click of the telegraph — it is coming daylight "over there" and the 
battle is being renewed. Moment by moment, in secret code, the 
cables, aerials and wires bring detailed reports of the struggle which 
swings back and forth along the Marne. Behind the gray walls of 
those great buildings are locked the secrets of the world. All the 
seas and continents are communicating with them for orders. And 
now, with the besieging public shut out, important men turn through 
the night hours to their real work, which is the study and determina- 
tion of policies. Sometimes in the White House itself a single study 
lamp burns late, when all is quiet but the steady tramp of armed 
sentries. 

So that there is no doubt of Washington being the war capital of 
the country. But it is more than that. Indeed, it began to be more 
than that before the war broke upon it. New York formerly was the 
financial capital of the country, but, when Congress instituted the 
Federal Reserve System, financial power began to pass to Washington. 

The war has made Washington the dominating financial center of 
the country. Hitherto the money barons came to Washington to tell 
the Government what to do. The United States Treasury was a 
subordinate of private enterprise. But today high finance is a suppliant 
at the capital, its every enterprise dependent on the Government's 
permission. 

New York formerly was the railway center of the country; Congress 
has made Washington the railway center; the director-general of all 
the lines has his office in the United States Treasury. 

Until recently New York was the telephone and telegraph capital 
of the country; but down at one end of Pennsylvania avenue a few 
men debated a few days, and at the other end of that historic avenue 
a man quietly affixed his signature to a document, and lo! Washington 
became the directing center of the nation's lines of communication. 
Never in_ the history of the planet has so complete a power been 
centered in any city or extended over so wide a jurisdiction. Ancient 
Rome, in the height of her glory, becomes by comparison the merest 
county-seat and her Emperors the sheriffs of a small domain. 

All this is due to the action of Congress and the pressure of war; 



but when Woodrow Wilson's contribution to this city's modern great- 
ness is considered it must be expressed in other terms. Woodrow 
Wilson has made Washington the capital of the world's triumphant 
thought. 

There was a time when Greece ruled the world's thought and Rome 
Avas the fount of power. There was a time when London controlled 
the world's finance, a mastery which later passed to New York and 
now is held by Washington. But in recent centuries there has been no 
acknowledged leader of the world's thought amongst the cities of the 
world, nor indeed amongst the nations. It has even been true in our 
tempestuous political past that Washington was not even the center of 
the thought of the United States. 

The war came on, dividing Europe into two camps, and still there 
was no leader of the world's thought. Paris spoke and London spoke, 
and both in similar terms, but they spoke as equals; neither led the 
other's thought. 
A CITY THAT SPEAKS TO THE WORLD. 

Then, as if blinded by that madness which the gods first visit upon 
those whom they would destroy, Germany aroused the American voice. 
At first it spoke in local accents, mere pleadings at the bar of inter- 
national law. But it was a calm voice and betokened confident 
knowledge and power. From affairs purely national it was drawn by 
degrees to wider issues and profounder principles, and presently it 
began to speak in terms of the whole human race, belligerent and 
neutral, bond and free; and presently the whole race turned an ear to 
listen. The war in Europe was lifted out of its localisms and set in the 
light of universal principle. 

Not Belgium only, but Germany herself; not Lorraine only, but 
all the pawned nationalities which could not lift a hand or a voice for 
themselves; not the issues of this war only, but the issues of all wars 
and strifes and jealousies and underhanded dealing — these were the 
deep concerns of which the American voice took note. And all the 
world listened. And all the world still listens. 

The city of Washington has become the world's oracle. What "The 
Man in the White House" says is echoed round the globe as no other 
pronouncement is. Even in Germany — as is well known here — his 
addresses and state papers are correctly printed and widely circulated 
and commented upon, and have even won disciples amongst the leaders 
of the greater universities, bold disciples who cry and write that 
President Wilson is preaching the gospel which Germany must believe 
to be saved. 

Washington — the capital of the world's thought. That is the feeling 
one gets from this city which lies in a bended arm of the ocean. As 
the Potomac flows to the sea which engirds all lands, so has the 
American idea gone out to influence all human thought. And as the 
whole world has come hither for sympathy and succor, so is it coming 
for the higher interpretation of the present strife and an illumining 
word on the great business of living together in peace again. 

So that when the Cabinet member made his remark quoted at the 
head of this article, I was bold enough to add 

"And the capital of the world, too!" 

"Yes," said he, "in a sense, in a very fine sense, the leader of the 
world's thought, at this time." 

The eyes of both of us, as by instinct, sought the place where a 
white portico gleamed beyond tall, cool trees, where sat and worked 
the man who had newly articulated the human urge for liberty. 



A Visit to President Wilson 



WASHINGTON, July 30.— The President of the United States 
walked bareheaded and with quick, elastic tread along a flower-bor- 
dered path from the White House to the presidential offices. 

The day was hot; a blistering sun drove blasts of heat along the 
avenues; but the President looked fresh and cool. As always, he was 
perfectly, though simply dressed, and in the summer garb that his 
photographs have made familiar^ — a blue coat, white flannel trousers 
and white canvas shoes. 

The President rarely comes to his offices in these days of war, but 
does most of his work in the seclusion of his upstairs study in the 
White House. This, however, was "Cabinet day," and at 2:30 p. m. he 
was to meet the men whom he has set over the great departments of 
the Government. 

But it had been arranged a week previously that on a given day 
before the Cabinet hour he would receive the representative of The 
Detroit News. 

It is seldom nowadays that the President receives anyone not con- 
nected with the Government, unless on the most important business, 
whereby many legends have grown up of his cold aloofness. But his 
position is not difficult to understand. There are many thousands of 
people who imagine that they have business of the utmost importance 
with the President. Those whose business is of such importance that 
it permits them to penetrate as far as Mr. Tumulty, the President's 
very capable secretary, usually discover that their errand is not with 
the President at all, but with one of the departments. The President 
has so much business of such greater moment that his time and 
strength are saved for that. 

THE PRESIDENT'S GUARD. 

When a certain congressman afterward heard that I had been re- 
ceived by the President, he exclaimed. "Well, that is more than 400 
of our congressmen have been able to do!" The President's time is 
just that closely guarded. 

Secretary Tumulty's office was receiving the sun just then, and I 
moved out into the cooler hall. It was apparently deserted of all 
but a clerk. Outside, at the other end of the hall, a policeman passed 
down the path, carefully scrutinizing every foot of it, and when he 
reached the hall-door he examined that, and let his eyes pass up and 
down and through the hallway. Then he disappeared to his post. A 
Negro attendant came through and blocked the screen-door open. 

It was evident that the moment was approaching when the Presi- 
dent should arrive. He has not the freedom of the ordinary citizen 
who may roam at will about his back garden. Whenever he is about to 
leave the White House, silent signals are given in important quarters, 
and certain silent, athletic fellows suddenly appear from no one knows 
where. 

So intent was I on watching for the President that when at length 
he strode through the door with a step of controlled vigor, I had 
eyes only for him. He came straight along the hallway, turning into 
his private office, and then I was quickly aware that I was not alone. 
In spaces that were untenanted a moment before, there were men — 
very quietly dressed men who had no apparent business there, but 
whose countenances did not invite conversational advances. 

It was all very strange. At the door the President entered stood 
a man whom I had not seen there before. There was a man at the 

—7— 



President's office door, who certainly was invisible a few seconds be- 
fore. There were two men standing where they could command the 
length of the hallway. And there was a particularly silent looking man 
at the doorway through which I entered the President's room. Not 
standing in the doorway, you understand, not serving as an obstruc- 
tion in any way, not having the slightest suggestion of police survey,- 
but very strangely giving one a sense of eyes — eyes — eyes, quietly 
alert, instantly ready. One felt that 'few movements escaped them. 
Indeed, that is putting it inaccurately; one felt that no movement what- 
ever escaped them, and that they knew the contour of every pocket, 
and the movement of every hand. 

STANDING BEFORE THE CHIEF MAGISTRATE. 

I thank heaven that I still have an unspoiled boylike reverence for 
the President of the United States, and that I can still feel a thrill in 
standing before the White House and recalling all the history that 
has centered there and the great spirits those simple white walls have 
sheltered. It was no idle hour that brought me to see the President. 
I knew I was standing before one of the great figures of the world and 
of history. I knew it would be a memory to cherish, every detail — 
even those which custom prevents my writing — worthy to be treasured. 

It was worth something to take the hand which had written the 
great state papers of these times and to look into the eyes which had so 
calmly faced the unprecedented facts of the last four years. 

But I must confess that when at last the suprehie moment came and 
I entered that circular room with its several doors, my attention was 
temporarily divided between the President and those silent men who 
stood in doorways surveying us from all angles. Nothing could pos- 
sibly be more unobtrusive than those men, and yet they gave one a 
sense of mysterious presences. Not that one resented it, or even felt 
uncomfortable under it — for it is well that the President of the United 
States should be guarded with the utmost care, awake and asleep — but 
the unusualness of it in one's own experience was very impressive. 

My own errand was simply and baldly to meet the President, talk 
with him a little and secure the basis of a character sketch. We had 
the time that remained before the Cabinet meeting. 

The President looked extremely well. He is fit, and feels it. He is 
erect and straight without stififness; he is a little taller than he seems 
to be when on the public platform. He looks older than when he was 
elected, even older than when last he visited Detroit, but he is not worn 
and does not appear harassed. 

HE BEARS THE BURDEN WELL. 

Still I could not but detect little signs of the burden he is bearing. 
The last time I saw him was two years ago, after he had spent a night 
on the train, and he had then stepped out to the work of an arduous 
day looking fresh as a daisy. He even showed a little color. But there 
is not so much color now, and his hair is thinner and grayer. 

And yet it is a fact that he is in better physical condition now than 
when he became President. His life is ordered in every detail by 
Admiral Grayson, his physician. His work is arranged so that he can 
find time to obey his physician's orders with regard to recreation. He 
golfs in the country air several times a week. He sometimes goes to 
the theater — once, at least, he has gone to a motion picture show. 
Some people criticize him for attending the theater in war times — but, 
then, they criticized Lincoln for telling stories in '63: 

The President is affable, but not effusively so. There are two ap- 



pearances of this quality in public men: there is the man who is ex- 
tremely friendly in his actions, extremely solicitous in his pretended 
personal interest in you, but you feel he is not sincere. Then there is 
the man who is extremely dignified, who feels his position and is afraid 
to unbend lest he break the spell — but you feel that his dignity is a 
veneer. Woodrow Wilson is reserved without being cold, and affable 
without being effusive. He is natural, but his nature is that of a culti- 
vated gentleman who is filling a very exalted place. He does not repel, 
but neither does he warmly invite. And yet he is human — his friends 
say he is intensely human, even fun-loving. There is abundant testi- 
mony on this point. 

He takes in the entire introduction with steady, friendly eye when 
you are presented to him, and you are a little surprised when later he 
makes a remark upon an obscure point in that introduction. It may be 
that he has discovered in your name a sign that you, like himself, are 
of Scottish descent, and he makes a playful remark about it. It may 
be that you have expressed your pleasure at his appearance of hardy 
health, and he is quite unaffectedly glad in telling you how fit he is. 
But you could never conceive him saying that he "feels bully," or 
clapping 3'ou on the back, or bestowing himself in his chair in an at- 
titude of negligent abandonment. 

IS THE PRESIDENT A COLD MAN? 

Woodrow Wilson is not a politician in the personal sense. He is 
an historian; he is a statesman; he has guided the destinies of thou- 
sands of young men as the president of a great university; and these 
things have left their indelible stamp on him; they have helped give 
him the high cultivation of character he possesses. 

It is frequently said that the President is cold, even icy. To be 
sure, you cannot be in his presence even for a moment without feeling 
that there is a great hardihood of power in his ensemble. You feel 
that below the surface lies a strong decisiveness, but it is in such 
serene control that it is not always belligerently asserting itself. 

Even before I met him I was constrained to believe by fresh read- 
ing of all his speeches that no "cold" man could think the thoughts 
he thinks and express them as he does. It would be constitutionally 
impossible. Or even outside the speeches, take his volume of essays 
entitled "Mere Literature," written at a time when he could not have 
been thinking even remotely of the Presidency, and see how impossible 
it would have been for that human play of thought to have proceeded 
from a cold mind. His thought is warm — that statement is beyond 
question. 

Now that I have seen the man himself and been within the circle 
of his personal atmosphere, I find him strong, dignified, but still so hu- 
man as to be the kind of man one would instinctively and confidently 
appeal to on a purely human matter. For all his culture, for all the 
lonely isolation of his position, he is one of us — an American 

A LONELY EMINENCE. 

The Presidency is an isolated place, and the President is an isolated 
man — not by his own choice, but of necessity. In the end, after all 
counsel has been summoned and heard, after all the facts are in, after 
all conflicting voices have roared themselves quiet — in the end, there 
is just one mind that makes the final decision, just one head upon 
whom the ultimate responsibility rests, just one name whose luster or 
whose stain shall be decreed by impartial history, the President's. 
It is now commonly understood that those passages in the President's 

— 9— 



speech accepting Lincoln's birthplace for the nation, those passages 
which speak of the lonely regions of the Presidency, are autobio- 
graphical. 

The White House itself is an isolated place. Set down in the busy 
center of the city of Washington, never busier than now, it stands 
nevertheless apart. It is not walled in as a fortress, it stands easily 
in view behind its iron palings and its park of trees. It even has a 
pastoral aspect when the flock of sheep now grazing there roam out in 
front of the house. But it belongs not to these local scenes, but to the 
Great Nation, past, present and to come. One never forgets that • 
within these walls, Lincoln agonized and prayed and set his great 
spirit to the tasks of his time. One never forgets that these ancient 
trees have been voiceless witnesses of tragedy and triumph. Even 
the august Capitol itself has not that same quality of set-apartness. 

And yet the White House is only the President's home. Mrs. Wil- 
son's food card and Red Cross card hang in the front room windows, 
as they do in millions of other American homes. There are even 
lightning rods on the roof, as in the rural districts. The family gar- 
den is there as it is in any other yard. A flag of modest dimensions 
floats at an eagle-tipped staff atop the house. On Bastile Day, for the 
first time in our history, another flag flew there, on a specially erected 
staff — it was the French tri-color. Sometimes one sees a coach and 
team drawn up under the portico, sometimes a Ford car. 

When the President rides out, a large closed car draws under the 
portico, two motorcj^cle men precede him through the crowded streets, 
and at other times flank his car, while an auto carrying secret service 
men trails close behind. When he returns, he walks quickly across 
the portico, following Mrs. Wilson; the secret service men alight and 
fade away amongst- the trees. Policemen are on all the White House 
gates and throughout the grounds day by day. And when night comes, 
the great iron doors in the basement of the War Department open, 
squads of soldiers march out, the greater part moving into the White 
House grounds, and a score or more marching around outside the 
fence to their fixed posts in the streets. All night long there is heard 
the tread of sentries inside and out the White House grounds. Some- 
times against a background of flaring light is seen a silhouetted sol- 
dier, his sloped rifle tipped with gleaming bayonet, pacing his post. 

THE PRESIDENT AT DIVINE WORSHIP. 

The President is a fairly regular attendant at church. The edifice he 
favors is an inconspicuous Presbyterian Church at a considerable dis- 
tance from the White House. It is not a large church, and it is with- 
out ornate adornment. It has no choir, but follows the old system 
of the precentor leading the singing. The President has a pew re- 
served well forward and usually appears on the precise moment when 
the service begins. 

When the President goes to church, the same precautions for his 
safety are taken as elsewhere. Usually a concourse gathers outside 
the building to see him enter. They line the church steps and extend 
far down the street. Policemen are at hand to keep the line. As the 
President appears, men lift their hats to him, a greeting which he re- 
turns. 

During service the President is an earnest participant and an at- 
tentive listener. He sings the hymns with a will and bows low during 
prayer. There is no word in the sermon to indicate his presence, but 
in the prayer there is heard the ancient petition that the Eternal might 
give guidance to the President of the United States and his counsel- 
lors, and sustain him in the courage and rectitude of his heart. 

—10— 



But a rather Curious thing has happened, and so quietly as hardly 
to attract the attention of any but the very observant. The President 
and Mrs. Wilson entered the church apparently alone, yet there ap- 
peared three men following him up the aisle at a distance, and the men 
dropped into vacant places at the end of pews at points along the 
aisle. Just before the sermon began, two more men entered ,the pew 
with the President and sat there. When the service was over and 
the final hymn had been sung, the congregation remained standing 
in their places, and at that moment the two men who had been sitting 
with the President stepped into the aisle and a little forward, to per- 
mit them a survey of the entire room. The President stepped out of 
his pew, moved a little aside for Mrs. Wilson to pass, and together 
they walked down the aisle toward the door, the three men sitting at 
the pew-ends each rising and following as the President passed his 
pew, the two men up front remaining where they were until the Presi- 
dent had passed through the doors. By the time the congregation 
reached the street, the Presidential motor was far toward the White 
House. 

It is said on authority that Woodrow Wilson had never been 
within the White House until he entered it as President. But with 
his known taste for dignified simplicity, he probably found the build- 
ing and its appurtenances quite to his mind. It is in the very midst 
of the thronging activities of the War Government, and yet it offers 
a seclusion all its own. The President is only a few minutes from any 
Cabinet member he may want to see. Across the street on one side 
are the State, Army and Navy departments; across the street on the 
other side is the Treasury Department. The other departments are 
distributed about the District of Qolumbia. 

The President's private office is finished in white, after the Colonial 
fashion. It is a circular room with four doors, having a row of deep- 
set windows on the southern side. These windows look across the 
park beyond which is known as The White Lot — a name redolent of 
Colonial times — and across the Potomac to Virginia and its purple 
hills. 

THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ADVISORS. 

In this room the President receives. There is a strange absence of 
ornamentation of every sort. The fireplace is plain. Not even a flag 
hangs there. A wide, noble desk is in perfect order, bearing a few 
reference volumes, a sheaf of sharpened pencils and a vase of fresh 
roses. In the wall spaces between the doors are set concave bookcases. 

One of the doors — and this was the only door that did not reveal 
the presence of one of the aforementioned quiet young men whose 
eyes were so unobtrusively on watch^ — leads to the Cabinet Room. 
This is a surprisingly small room, set with a long table, down each 
side of which stood a row of black leather chairs. At, one end stood 
the President's chair, distinguished by having arms and a somewhat 
higher back. Each chair is marked by a silver plate bearing the of- 
ficial title of its user, as — -"The President," "The Secretary of State," 
and so on through the Cabinet list. 

It would be pure bravado to say that one did not have thoughts of 
the momentous discussions which have been held in that room. The 
large maps on the wall, the movable pins that mark the daily, hourly 
changes of the battle lines, were too conspicuous to lead to other 
thoughts than that here was the center of American deliberation on the 
greatest event in our history, and here, too, in a peculiar sense the 
center of the world's hope for democracy. 

And the chief figure in this mighty confluence of events, the mind 

—11— 



which more than any other had enshrined the immemorial yearnings 
of humanity in words the world will not soon forget — the chief figure, 
he who has defined the issue and has cast the deciding ballot in the 
world's greatest contest, was there in person that summer day — calm, 
strong and radiating a sense of deep, quiet power. 

In all this story I have only one item of news to give — the Presi- 
dent will not "recess." There will be no vacation for him this year; 
he is on daily, hourly duty till the war ends. 



The President gave his hand in farewell. My last glance left him 
as I had found him — alone. 

Outside, the Cabinet members were assembling. Some of them 
came afoot, mopping their brows. Some came in massive cars, to which 
the guards at the gates immediately opened. One came in an old- 
fashioned carriage, drawn by horses. It had been* a great day in 
France. The public bulletins had been bringing great news for days. 
The maps in the Cabinet Room had marked rapid and glorious 
changes. And here were assembling the chief directors of America. 

As I came out, the flag over the White House had caught a breeze, 
and its rippling lines of color were straining, straining at the halyards 
— seeming to throw long yearning arms of light IN THE DIREC- 
TION OF FRANCE! 



-12— 



The Creal Purpose— Americans World Program 

WASHINGTON, D. C, July 31.— Day by day it becomes more 
apparent how the war is going to end. As to when it is going to end 
the former prophets of a long war become less and less convincing. 
And by the same token, the words of President Wilson take on miore 
and more an ominous aspect. Every blow the American army strikes 
brings the Fourteen Propositions of the President nearer their test 
of practical application. E-^ery mile the enemy is driven iback, every 
segment of his power that is dislodged and destroyed simply brings 
one stage nearer the hour when President Wilson's program for the 
world shall become the imminent demand of the Allies in the World 
Council of Peace. 

On Jan. 8, 1918, these propositions were ideal desires embodied in 
a speech. Today they represent American world-judgment backed by 
military force. Tomorrow they will be the working- program of a new 
Civilization "which is confidently expected to rise from the ashes of 
the present holocaust. 

What is America fighting for? What is the Great Purpose we 
hoped to achieve, when we emerged from our hemispheric seclusion 
and threw in our lot with the champions of world democracy? 

In a speech at Washington, in May, 1917, a month after the declara- 
tion of war. President Wilson said: "We have gone in with no special 
grievance of our own." His words were misinterpreted in some quar- 
ters to mean that we w^ent in on account of the grievances of other 
nations. The President explained that he meant that we had no 
grievance different from that of other nations, no grievance peculiar to 
ourselves, but the common grievance of four-fifths of the world. 

This coincides with a remark made to me by a very high official, 
close to the President, who said he discounted all statements that we 
went to war because we feared an immediate German invasion of the 
United States. There was no question, he said, as to what Germany 
would like to do, but there was a question of what she would find 
herself able to do— and an immediate invasion of America had been 
beyond the Kaiser's military strength at any time after the second year 
of the European war. 

"But," he said, "if Germany had won the war — and in all military 
senses, except the admission of defeat on the part of the Allies, she 
has won it several times — it would have meant that the American half 
of the world would have to arm itself against the Prussianized half. 
I mean to say *hat a vicior.ous Prussi'.ni>m in control of Europe and 
a part of Asia, would have begun to prepare for real world conquest. 

"She would have had half the civilized world as a base from which 
to work against our half. It would have meant that for generations 
to come the Americas would have to fortify the entire coast line from 
Hudson Bay to Cape Horn and from the Cape to Alaska; every man 
in North and South America would have to take compulsory military 
training. The two American continents would be compelled to keep 
themselves always ready for war, at an unimaginable cost in taxation 
and the cost of the Prussianization of our entire life. 

"Whether at peace or at war, we could not be free and live our lives 
as we have been living them. America went to war to save herself 
and the world from the possibility of this." 

Every day of the struggle brings closer the hour when all the na- 
tions, Allied and enemy, will have to march up before President Wil- 
' —13— 



son's nropositions and say what they will do about them. Greater than 
the war itself will be the revolution of the lives of the nations when 
these propositions are adopted — which the Allies have morally pledged 
themselves to do. The supreme event of the epochal upheaval is yet 
to come, when an American President, by proposals extremely simple, 
dominates the World Peace Council. 

It can be said that President Wilson has not changed his mind 
since first he notified the world of what a stable and enduring peace 
would demand. This is not to say that on minor matters he has not 
modified his opinions, for he has. 
NEVER SUCH AGONY AGAIN. 

For example: At one time the President thought that the German 
people would be glad to be released from their present form of gov- 
ernment, and though it was never in his thought that it was either 
his right or his duty to force such a.' change upon them, he was of the 
opinion that they would welcome the opportunity to make it for them- 
selves. But he has come to believe that the German people prefer the 
form of government they have — that they like it. And on his principle of 
the self-determination of peoples, they can keep it for all that he will 
interpose to the contrary, and welcome. But he is determined to see 
to it that no peace is concluded which will enable the present German 
power, or any government that may succeed it, ever again to become a 
military menace to the peace of the world. 

The German people may keep their Kings and Kaisers galore and 
their gaudy courts; but those rulers will be bound by the will and 
the might of the world to courses of conduct which will make the 
present world agony forever impossible of repetition. The President's 
will to destroy Prussianism as a world menace is, if possible, stronger 
now than it was a year ago. 

What are these proposals which begin to loom so commandingly 
above the horizon of war? They are, in the order the President stated 
them: 

"Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at." That is plain. No 
secret diplomatic card-tricks at the Peace Council. A literal minded 
statesman thought that this meant mass meetings of the American 
people with the treaty-making statesmen of foreign nations, and intro- 
duced a resolution in the American Congress that a certain interna- 
tional arrangement then pending be discussed as a tax question might. 

The objection of the Administration to this course was exploited as 
a retreat by the President from his original position. In which con- 
nection it may be worth while to read the proposal as a whole: "Open 
COVENANTS OF PEACE, openly arrived at, AFTER WHICH there 
shall be NO PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDINGS 
of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the 
public view." 

Oibviously, the President was not criticizing American diplomacy, 
the results of which always are made known to the people, and which 
have never caused or contemplated war, the treaties themselves not 
being entered into with the President, but with representatives of the 
American people; he was referring to the secret diplomacy of Europe 
which always remained secret, the secrecy being frequently used as 
concealment, for the practice known as "double-crossing," the sole out- 
look of which was toward war. 

"Absolute freedom upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in 
peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part 
by international action for the enforcement of international covenants." 
This is to make the nations of the world the peace force of the world. 

—14— 



"The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the 
establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations 
consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its mainte- 
nance." This is in direct opposition to the plan of the "never-done- 
hating" contingent to continue an economic boycott, or trade v^^arfare 
to the death, after military warfare is ended. The President clearly 
sees that nothing v\'ould more directly foment another war. If Germany 
consents to the peace and assists to maintain it, she will be admitted, 
after certain reparations have been assumed by her, to the economic 
fraternity of the nations. 

"Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will 
be reduced to the lowest points consistent with dolnestic safety." No 
nation ever went to war without a great war armament. The President 
sees that if you remove the fuel you can't have a fire. The Pacifists 
are therefore partly right in their argument; they are only wrong in 
contending that if the United States has no armament — the fuel of 
war — Germany, for example, could not start a fire if she. had the 
armament. With warlike preparedness nowhere, war is physically im- 
possible. 

RIGHTING THE WRONGS OF HISTORY. 

" * * * In determining all * * * questions of sovereignty 
the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with 
the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined." 
This is in consonance with the President's contention, which all free 
peoples confirm, that human beings are not pawns to be handed around 
or traded off to suit the exigencies of war or politics, but are endowed 
with certain inherent and inalienable rights which any power ignores 
at its peril. 

"The evacuation of all Russian territory." "Belgium * * * must 
be evacuated and restored." "All French territory should be freed 
and the invaded portions restored." "A readjustment of the frontiers 
of Italy * * * along clearly recognizable lines of nationality." "The 
peoples of Austria-Hungary * * * should be accorded the freest 
opportunity of autonomous development." "Rumania, Serbia and 
Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored." "The 
Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured 
a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under 
Turkish rule should be secured an undoubted security of life and an 
absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomos development." "An 
independent Polish state should be erected which should include the 
territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations." 

This group of statements proposes nothing less than that the wrongs 
of this war should be righted, not only, ibut also the wrongs of history 
out of which the war grew. The roots of the struggle run deep into the 
past. Though often cut down by swords, they bloom red every few 
years. "The Balkan war cloud," that continuous harbinger of European 
upheaval for centuries, is nothing more or less than the sprouting again 
of ancient resentments watered by unspeakable wrongs. The cure is 
radical; these wrongs committed by the fathers in a darker time must 
be freely righted by their sons in a more enlightened time. Mankind 
must recognize the principle that the eternal has decieed world-power 
to no race, no nation and no man, because there is none that can be 
trusted with it. Colossal power may hinder the racial instinct, the 
desire for liberty, fundamental in humanity; but no power is ever great 
enough to destroy it. When denied, it festers, it breaks, it poisons. 
And no settlement ever endures that is not founded on universal 

—15— 



righteousness. The American President proposes nothing- less than 
that the world confess its historic sins and repent, and bring forth 
fruits meet for repentance. 

The Fourteenth and last Proposal is for a general association of 
nations to guarantee the stability of these readjustments when they are 
made. 

No declaration in the history of liberty since the American Declara-- 
tion at Philadelphia has come upon the mind of the world with such 
compelling and crystallizing force as the new Declaration at Washing- 
ton. The mere fact that an American President should utter such 
principles, speaking officially, speaking directly to the people of the 
world and their rulers, marked a long step, the culminating step of 
centuries of ascent toward the shrine of a more perfect Freedom. 

IDEALISM MADE PRACTICABLE. 

The fact that these principles were not suspended between heaven 
and earth to float in a hazy halo of idealism, but were translated into 
terms of the most tremendous force not actuated by selfish national 
desire that the world has ever*seen assembled, renders them uniquely 
pre-eminent, not only as the hope of four-fifths of the world, but as 
its adopted program. There is no system of political philosophy today 
bent toward Freedom, no wild and impotent yearning of the instincts 
of subject peoples that can approach in majesty, in profundity, and 
in Twentieth Century practicability the new and upward trending path 
struck out by the President. 

If it were mere idealism it would ibe the highest political idealism 
ever attained and uttered by statesman or reformer. When Woodrow 
Wilson was professor of jurisprudence and politics at Princeton he dealt 
with young minds that had the morning freshness of idealism still 
upon them, and he heard from the students such impractical visions 
as ethereal angels might have had. And Woodrow Wilson would 
quietly say: "Just draft that into the form of an Act of Congress, 
please." He always insisted that the star should be harnessed to a 
wagon. The teacher has followed his own instruction, he has drafted 
the world ideal into a practical program. 

The statesmen of the world have sat at his feet and have pro- 
nounced the instruction faultless and the program fully attainable, if 
mankind seeks righteousness first. The great powers of the world 
hail it as a foretold release from the intolerable burdens of war estab- 
lishments in times of peace. The oppressed peoples everywhere hear 
in it the trumpet of a new resurrection of Liberty. And the human 
spirit at large has been lifted above the trammels of historic errors 
and their consequences, into the serene light of eternal rectitude and 
has descried in the near distance a new Humanity set on foundations 
of Justice. 

Politics and the nearness of the man forbid a description of the 
American President in terms of his personal greatness as the centuries 
will view him; but there is no barrier whatever to describing his 
utterance as the capstone of all the building-Avords of Liberty up to this 
time. 

Heed well the Fourteen Propositions. The American Army in 
France and the armies of the Allies are even now opening the doors 
of the council chamber in which they shall be proclaimed the new 
rule of the world. 



—16-^ 



Damming Up American Sources of German Wealth 



WASHINGTON, Aug. 3.— It is one of the ironies of our history 
that the rivers of money which German agents poured out to destroy 
our neutrality and paralyze our national will, was American money. It 
was earned here, contributed here and spent here. It is doubtful if 
the entire American propaganda dipped very heavily at any time into 
the German war chest. 

The method was very simple. At the beginning of the European 
War, millions of dollars' worth of war bonds was floated in the United 
States by the belligerents, and one of the more substantial flotations 
was made by the German Government. Many people bought large 
quantities of German bonds because at the beginning of the war they 
looked like good investments. Many more people bought because their 
sympathies were with Germany. Nothing seemed more improbable 
at the time than that the United States and Germany would ever go 
to war; it was not even thought of; if it had been deemed possible, 
the flotation of German bonds would not have been so successful. How- 
ever, the Government of the United States has turned the tables and 
has put millions of dollars of German property into Liberty Bonds, so 
that German money is now fighting the Kaiser in a more military sense 
than ever American money was made to fight America. 

It simply shows how utterly unwarlike are our American institu- 
tions, that when we declared war we had no way of locating or con- 
trolling enemy sources of wealth in this country. Our own_ processes • 
of business were being used as feeders for the enemy; business con- 
cerns under alien control were being used as sources of pressure upon 
our Government; enemy power over some of our most essential sources 
of production was so extended and potent as to be actually embarras- 
sing in the first days of the war. While the Secret Service had un- 
covered the sources of active propaganda, the source of maintenance 
for the propaganda had to wait its discovery — there wasn't time, 
there weren't enough men to do the whole job at once. We discov- 
ered the propaganda and effectually controlled it upon the outbreak of 
war; the discovery of the sources of its money support is not com- 
pleted even yet, and new disclosures are being made every day. 

How is it done? The answer involves the story of the Alien Prop- 
erty Custodian's Department. War was declared in April, 1917, but it 
was September before the Trading With the Enemy Act was passed, 
and it was October before a man was appointed to begin the work of 
uncovering enemy wealth in this country. The man was A. Mitchell 
Palmer, a Pennsylvania Quaker who had been in Congress. It is an 
uncontradicted story in Washington that Mr. Palmer was offered the 
post of secretary of war by the President, but declined because war 
was a violation of his Quaker faith! However, many things have hap- 
pened since, and there is no fighting spirit that now surpasses Mr. 
Palmer's in intensity. • , , • 

That is how the work began — with one man. He carried his oath 
of office around in his pocket, wondering where and how to begin. 
There was no precedent for what he was supposed to do; there was 
no information to proceed upon. Finally he rented a room for an office, 
with a colored boy for attendant. He looked at his job and decided 
that if he were to accomplish anything he must ask the assistance of 
he country. And once more the tremendous importance of voluntary 
ervice was demonstrated. People from all over the country responded 



with their knowledge of enemy holdings. The reports poured in at the 
rate of 1,000 a day, completely swamping Mr. Palmer's one-room office. 
The turn upward came one day when Ralph Stone, of Detroit, 
walked in to ask directions for the disposal of a large enemy-owned es- 
tate he was handling. It happened that Mr. Stone and Mr. Palmer had 
been classmates at Swarthmore. And the thought occurred to Mr. 
Palmer: "Here is Stone, an experienced trust company man; why not 
get him to organize the gigantic trust department which will be neces- 
sary to handle these enemy estates?" That is precisely what Mr. Stone 
stayed six months to do, and Mr. Palmer frequently acknowledges his 
indebtedness to Mr. Stone's valuable and timely assistance. Detroit 
also provided Mr. Palmer an able aide in W. G. Fitzpatrick, who until 
recently was assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation. 

ONE BILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS IN ENEMY CONTROL. 

As the reports continued to pour in it became evident that the Alien 
Property Custodian had a most extensive and complicated business on 
his hands, a business which eventually may exceed one billion dollars. 
His department now occupies seven floors of a large apartment build- 
ing and has lateh^ spread out to include a second large building which 
is alien property. In six months after he began Mr. Palmer was direct- 
ing a trust company second in size to none in the country. He has an 
extensive voluntary organization of investigators, including 30,000 
lawyers, probate judges, banks, tax commissions, postmasters and real 
estate boards. He also has the co-operation of the Secret Service Sec- 
tions of the Army and Navy, the Department of Justice and the War 
Trade Board and the governmental agencies. Thus he has spread over 
the country a vast net which is slowly but surely gathering in all the 
sources of enemy wealth existing here. 

There are now in this department 25,000 property reports, _ only a 
third of which has thus far been placed on the books, but this third 
totals $450,000,000. There are enormous holdings not yet uncovered; 
there are other holdings in control of camouflage American corpora- 
tions hastily organized to preserve German property for its original 
owners. 

Today Mr. Palmer is running 250 very large business concerns, 
among them being breweries, chocolate factories, woolen mills, steel 
mills, lumber camps and mills, steamship lines, insurance companies, 
lace factories, cotton mills, piano factories, tobacco plantations, fruit 
farms, mines, saloons, hotels, a newspaper, a menagerie and certain art 
enterprises. He. keep the largest general store in the world. 

One naturally expects some very starting statements as to the ex- 
istence of a partnership between the German Government and German 
business in the United States, some wild and mysterious tales of Ger- 
man industries serving as a cover for military invasion of this country. 
But, on the whole, such expectations are disappointed. It is possible, 
however, "if you have the mind of a prosecuting attorney," as one mem- 
ber of the department expressed it, to observe a number of coincidences, 
the significance of which is obvious. 

GERMAN BUSINESS A WAR AUXILIARY. 

For illustration: It is a fact that two weeks before the European 
war broke out, the German woolen, cotton and silk industries in this 
country received the largest supply of dyestuffs they had ever had in 
stock. They fortified themselves with a i^ear's supply of this commod- 
ity—a practice unheard of before. Moreover, for three weeks before 
the outbreak feverish haste was observable everywhere to rush to 
German-owned industries enormously large quantities of raw ma- 

— 26 — 



terial, so that additional warehouses had to be buih to contain it. And, 
third, there was a definite, concerted movement among the German 
financiers in the United States to unload all securities that probably 
would be affected unfavorably by war. 

But the Alien Property Custodian deals only in facts, not conjec- 
tures. If you ask whether the department has uncovered any direct 
preparations for an attack upon the United States, you will be given 
facts like the following.: 

St. Andrews Bay, Fla., is the nearest United States harbor to the 
Panama Canal. It is entirely inclosed by a belt of timber-land miles 
deep. For 75 miles in all directions the land and riparian rights are 
controlled by a member of a ruling German royal house. Ostensibly 
owned by the German-American Lumber Co., it was the scene of 
strange proceedings. Its officers and superintendents did not stay 
• longer than a year, and were never chosen from the United States. A 
succession of them came from the Argentine, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and 
other southern countries. They changed as regularly as army officers. 
The profits of the business were disseminated in the United States for 
purposes not yet disclosed. The harbor was a splendid one, but no 
one outside the company was permitted to use it. No one could get 
within 75 miles of it without trespassing. When war broke out a 
quantity of the most virulent German propaganda was found in those 
forests and in consequence two presidents of the company are now in 
internment camps. 

The sequel is that the lumber forests of St. Andrews Bay are now 
turning out material for cantonments and ships, and the harbor is the 
scene of numerous launchings of American craft. The 600,000 acres 
of lumber, property of a German prince, is proving a very cheap yet 
valuable adjunct to the United States in this war. Moreover, the Gov- 
ernment is selling the harbor sites for the benefit of American com- 
merce. 

It is the opinion here that the origin of German commercial enter- 
prise in the United States was innocent of objectionable features. 
"Industrial colonization" and "peaceful penetration" were afterthoughts. 

HOW GERMAN-AMERICAN 
BUSINESS BECAME KAISER ALLY. 

Let us take "The House of Conrad" as an example. Forty years 
ago, let us say, the elder Conrad began to do business with the United 
States. Business increased and he conceived the idea of building an 
American inill here to obviate the pajanent of duties on his goods. So 
he sent his son over to the United States to build a mill, and sent work- 
men to man it and German machinery to equip it. The younger Conrad 
did well and sent back large sums every year to his father in Germany. 
Of course, the German Government saw to it that it received a hand- 
some share of the elder Conrad's American profits. Presently other 
German manufacturers were following the elder Conrad's example 
and they too were building factories in America — usually in the neigh- 
borhood^ of other German-American factories. 

The'^sons thus established in America settled down and married, 
some of them, American girls; sent their sons to Harvard and Yale, 
became to all appearances good citizens, and were even chosen to pub- 
lic office. More and more German businesses established themselves 
in America, until their methods were felt in every field. The "Made 
in Germany" goods were mostly made in America, in factory towns 
along the eastern coast. 

Then one day the German Government awoke to what it had here 
in America. As today on the battlefield, soldiers see a long string of 

—27— 



shell holes, which by a little work in connecting them can be made 
into a trench, so the German Governmeiit saw that by joining these 
large German-American businesses in some sentimental union for the 
Fatherland, it could avail itself of a great power here. In the mean- 
time, of course, the great German-American factories had their sec- 
tions of cities where the population was entirely German; they had 
their school boards; they had a native language newspaper or two; and 
the great business concerns, following the American practice, usually 
had representatives at Washington, either in Congress or in the lobby, 
looking out for their interests. 

GERMAN-AMERICAN ENTERPRISE 
DUBBED "GERMAN COLONIES." 

Bent purely on business, these German-Americans had constructe'a 
something which by a little unification the German Government could 
use. But the important fact to be considered is that it was the Ger- 
man Government which made the discovery. The maps in the 
Foreign Office suggested the plan. These German-American indus- 
trial centers began to be marked on German official maps as "German 
colonies." The German Government began to cultivate these expatri- 
ated business men. It sent its notables among thein to stimulate their 
sentiment for the Old Land. It put its scientific and transportation 
service at their command. One of the last favors it did for them, 
and one which was intended to hold them in duty bound to help Ger- 
man purposes, was to give them warning of the war, and to ship them 
great supplies of essential commodities obtainable only in Germany, 
so that German-American business could continue profitably no mat- 
ter who suffered. 

In payment for this favor the German Government asked the 
German-American business men to hold the United States aloof from 
the war. With their newspapers, their representatives in Congress 
and elsewhere, their financial pressure, their public standing generally, 
it was confidently believed they could do this with the methods sup- 
plied them by the German Government. Indeed, they had no doubt 
that they could do it. And they tried very hard, but failed. 

Now, that is not nearly so exciting as tales of hidden armaments 
and thousands of reservists drilling by night, but, according to infor- 
mation at Washington, it comes nearer the fact; and if we can curb 
our taste for the sensational we shall be able to see that the more 
matter-of-fact conditions were really the more dangerous. 

Well, what has become of these great properties? They are all 
working now for the United States Government, some of them di- 
rectly, others indirectly. Americans have been put in charge of them. 
The woolen and cotton mills are turning out American uniforms. The 
steamship companies are carrying American troops. The lumber com- 
panies are building American cantonments and ships. The food com- 
panies are supplying American fighting men. And to date about 
$45,000,000 have been put into the United States Treasury to buy Lib- 
erty Bonds. 

Indeed, there are now few really enemy alien businesses in this 
country. The Alien Property Custodian has had to issue a warning 
against the mistaken zeal of American business men who seek to turn 
public prejudice against concerns formerly owned and operated by 
Germans. The concerns may have been German a year ago-— they are 
now American, and their prosperity contributes to the American war 

chest. 

—28— 



TRICKS TO RETAIN MONEY SOURCES. 

Of course, the department meets with some skullduggery. To pre- 
vent seizure some German owners have transferred their property to 
pseudo-Americans on notes which are to be paid in the year 1937, or 
some other date safely set beyond the end of the war. In other in- 
stances, sham American corporations have been organized to fare 
property for German owners. In all such cases, as soon as they wftre 
discovered, the Alien Property Custodian takes prompt action. 

When properties are sold, the buyers are strictly investigated, and 
their subsequent actions are carefully noted. If it is discovered that 
they have acted for the former German owners, or have practiced any 
deceit whatsoever in the transaction, they are fined and the property 
confiscated. It is an extremely costly proposition to oppose the Gov- 
ernment in this matter. 

It would be an interesting speculation to consider what effect all 
this is to have on American business. The insurance business already 
has been benefited since a dozen large foreign-owned insurance com- 
panies are in liquidation, their business being taken over by American 
companies. Others may be closed out as the work progresses. 

The American fur business was completely controlled from Leipzig. 
America was simply the collecting and shipping agency. Every pelt 
had to go to Leipzig to be dressed and dyed. Americans were allowed 
to buy back only three-fifths of their catch. And in doing so they were 
forced to pay the original cost — their own work — plus the expense of 
dressing and dying, plus a handsome German profit, plus a 30 per cent 
duty to get their own American furs back into the United States. The 
interests of the German fur barons were sold to American furriers for 
several millions of dollars, which was turned into the United States 
treasury, and now the American fur trade is independent, and a process 
of dyeing equal to that of Leipzig or London has been perfected. Thus 
a large source of profit has been securely placed in the hands of Ameri- 
can industry. The list could be enlarged, but this will indicate how 
the system works. 

And what is to become of the value of these German properties after 
the war? For the reader will understand, of course, that the United 
States is not stealing German property. It is, however, making all 
enemy property and money work for the United States in this war. 
The proceeds go into Liberty Bonds. Future disposition is in the hands 
of Congress and probably will not be decided until after the war. The 
more than one billion dollars in value now in sight will have consider- 
able weight with Germany in the terms of settlement. Moreover, there 
will be an "accounting" at the end of the war which may turn German 
property forever out of German hands. There is a strong feeling here 
that German capital, having proved its active enmity to the United 
States, should not be allowed to begin where it left off with the added 
advantage accruing from American management during the war. There 
is a strong feeling that the aforesaid "House of Conrad" should be 
required to begin, if allowed to recommence at all, at the bottom of 
the ladder, in genuine competition and not with the advantage of the 
German governmental aid it has heretofore received. Certainly it is 
felt that the profits being made during the war and deposited in Lib- 
erty Bonds under no circumstances should be returned to the German 
owners of the properties. 

WHO IS THE BUSINESS "ENEMY"? 

One last point: Who is the "enemy" contemplated in these pro- 
ceedings? The definition of "enemy" is very interesting. Any person^ 



regardless of citizenship or nativity, who is within the lines of the 
enemy, is regarded as an "enemy." Even an American citizen detained 
abroad within the enemy lines is regarded as an "eneniy" by the terms 
of the "trading with the enemy act." But a peaceful German or Aus- 
trian citizen residing here is not regarded as an enemy. All persons 
interned by the War Department are "enemies," whether Americans or 
other. American wives of enemy aliens are counted as enemies to 
prevent their incomes reaching their husbands through neutral coun- 
tries. All citizens or subjects of Germany or Austria-Hungary who 
have been on enemy territory since the outbreak of- the European 
War are regarded as "enemies." The list has 10 classifications. There 
are the most interesting: 

Why is an American citizen who is detained by the enemy classified 
as an "enem3^" Because his very situation forces him to "trade with 
the eneniy." If he has property in the United States, pressure may be 
brought to bear an him by rough usage or otherwise to dispose of it 
to purchase favors, and thus assist the enemy. Being classified as an 
"enemy,"' his property may be guarded in his interest by the United 
States Government, and at the same time prevented from becoming of 
assistance to the enemy. There are numerous cases, each full of 
human interest, in all these classifications. 

Out West a farmer boy wrote that when war between the United 
States and Germany seemed imminent^ his father decamped for Ger- 
many to fight for his Fatherland. He left his wife and six children on 
the farm. The son reported the farm as enemy property, as required 
by law, but pleaded that he be allowed to keep it to support his mother 
and the other children. He said they were all Americans at heart. 
They did not wish to be punished for their father's act. Of course, the 
Alien Property Custodian arranged that the tenor of that family's life 
go on undisturbed. Its policy in all such cases is admirably and 
humanely American. 

It cannot be said too often or too explicitly that the subject of an 
enemj^ government residing in this country will never be molested by 
the American Government as long as he conducts himself properly. We 
do not follow the course of the German government in such matters. 
We do not punish people because of their nationality. The law-abiding- 
resident, no matter where his allegiance may be, is perfectly secure 
during his period of good behavior. In a long search through the ac- 
tivities of the Government at war, the present writer has been unable 
to find a single trend toward oppression of any kind. 



—30— 



Another Interior Enemy— The Profiteer 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5. — I came to Washington with hot indigna- 
tion against the profiteer. It seemed inconceivable that men would 
trade in the life-blood of the nation, coin profit out of the sacrifice of 
the soldiers, and deal with greedy dishonesty in the money of the Lib- 
erty Loans which the people had scraped together with such care and 
self-abnegation. 

I expected to find the profiteer in Washington and hoped to wrest 
from him the secret of his sadly twisted mind. But on arriving there 
I discovered that he had been left behind in the body of the nation. 

The first note on this subject was heard in the train. Two western 
business men were journeying to Washington with their troubles. Both 
had government contracts and neither seemed to be very happy about 
it. One was a manufacturer of shells — he was "in the shell game," as 
he phrased it. Said he, "We have even a closer proposition than the 
fuse men," and his entire conversation dealt with the heavy expense 
of a new factory, the bonuses he had to pay his workmen for speed, 
the cost of training hundreds of new employes. 

Said he, "It looked like a good contract when I got^ it, but every- 
thing has gone up on me to such an extent that I won't break even." 

He was going to Washington to inquire if it would be worth while 
for him to go ahead at top speed, regardless of expense, and swallow 
his loss in the assurance that the next contract would yield a working 
profit. 

Then, after I had been in Washington two days I happened to be 
going through the great department of army engineers and I heard a 
case being pleaded there. The holder of a government contract had 
gone through with it up to the official specifications, but had lost every- 
thing he had in doing so. He had been compelled to mortgage his 
home to keep the work moving. He was asking if he could hope for 
relief sufficient to enable him to remain in business. Naturally, his 
case was taken up, and the government will deal justly with him. But 
a government investigator will gather all the facts at first-hand first. 

This led me to make inquiries, and an official high in the Govern- 
ment told me that contracts had resulted in outrageous enrichment m 
some cases and in impoverishment in other cases. 

"Naturally," said he, "we are more able to rectify matters m the lat- 
ter cases than in the former. It is simple enough to pay for honest 
work done at a loss; it is pretty difficult to reclaim exorbitant profits 
once they have been taken under contract terms." 

These things are cited in the beginning to indicate that the question 
is not as simple as it seems. 

Repeating what I had often said at home, I asked. Why don t you 
fix the prices?" , , , , • i u 

"We do," was the reply, "and curiously enough that is where much 
of the trouble begins. We fix a good average price. The very effi- 
ciently managed mill can make, by reason of its efficiency, a large profit 
on the average price. The less efficiently managed.>mill makes less, in- 
deed sometimes loses money. So that price-fixing is not the universal 
cure for profiteering. We must have the output of all the mills. We 
can't run them all ourselves— we have to enlist the experience of the 
men who have owned and operated them for years. It is a very com- 
plicated question." ^^u^a 

"Then why don't you fix the rate of profit over cost? I asked. 

"That is worse than the other," was the answer, for the reason 



that some men will enhance the cost of production in order to increase 
the amount of their profif. If we say that we will give them 10 per 
cent on the cost of production, an honest man will produce the con- 
1r»ct at a cost, say, of $50,000 and make a $5,000 profit. A dishonest man 
trill recklessly boost his costs to $100,000, and that makes his profit 
$10,000. It ia th« samft rule for both, but in one cate it makft« far raak 
ffofiteeiring." 

liXPOSINQ THE GREEDY PROFITEER. 

"Isn't it possible to get after those dishonest producers?" I asked. 

"Certainly, and we are doing it. But we can't employ a force of 
men equal to an army in order to make citizens behave honestly toward 
the government. However, with such force as we have, we are doing 
much. Here is a case our agents uncovered" — and my informant cited 
the instance of a western firm which had been having a high old time 
at the expense of the government. In order to put up the costs and so 
increase the profits, the members of the firms and the heads of depart- 
ments had doubled their salaries and treated themselves to the most 
expensive makes of automobiles, charging both to costs. They were 
making the government pay for the machines, and were collecting 
profit on the purchase price besides. They were raising their salaries 
and collecting a percentage on the increase. They are very crestfallen 
men today. They are working tooth and nail for the government, giv- 
ing the highest value for the lowest consistent cost, hoping thereby to 
save hemselves if they can. 

"That, of course, is a comparatively easy case," said my informant. 
"There are other cases far more subtle. But we now know what a just 
cost is, and we are not slow to {"ftvestigate where costs rise. Sometimes 
it reveals human nature at its worst." 

And that, indeed, is the secret of profiteering — human nature. One 
of my most assiduous quests was to discover if possible just what goes 
on in the mind of the profiteer. A dozen interviews brought many 
facts, but no psychology. At length I reached the highest source in 
this especial field, a source not usually attainable by interviewers, and 
there I found a man who had a mind to the psychology of the matter 
as well. That is usually the case; the higher you go, the more brains 
and insight. 

Profiteering in these times which make it a sin against country and 
humanity is the product of the cash register type of mind. The com- 
mercial mind functions normally along lines of profit. Unless a counter- 
sentiment comes strongly enough to shock it into new channels, it 
simply goes on extracting profits. And it is not always stark avarice 
that leads to profiteering; it is often sheer habit. 

It is sometimes possible to instil the higher sentiment into com- 
manding commercial minds, and when this is done the results are revo- 
lutionary. I was given some instances of that, but really their charac- 
teristics are too similar to religious conversion to bear repetition here. 

HOW ONE PROFITEER WAS CURED. 

However, in one instance I am not indebted to government sources for 
my information; I met the man and he talked enough to indicate his 
case. He is a New Yorker. He had just completed a $500,000 contract 
for the government, and his profit on that half a million dollars worth 
of business was just one per cent. It is not the first government con- 
tract he has had, but it is the first on which he has not made a fat 
p'rofit; 

What is the explanation? You will disbover it if you look at the left 
lapel of his- coat. You will see there a piti befifing a sefViCie star. 

— 32 — 



His boy, who was growing up in the business, came home one night 
and said: 

"Dad, I've been feehng hke a rotter for weeks. We've been getting 
a rake-off on this war and we've been feehng pretty patriotic because 
we have been making safe investments in Liberty Bonds. On the way 
home from the office this afternoon I stepped into the Navy office and. 
enhsted. I'm going Wednesday." 

He was an only son, the lieir of the business. The father, to hide 
his emotion, grew needlessly profane as he sat there in the dusk telling 
rae the story. But there is one less profiteer in the land. He can't 
make money out of his boy's blood. He can't overcharge the govern- 
ment to whom his boy has given what money could not buy. 

Of course, there is profiteering still going on, but here is the start- 
ling fact: the people are being more mercilessly exploited through the 
channels of ordinary trade than is the government through war con- 
tracts. I shall return to that in a moment. 

The heads of the War and Navy departments told me that they had 
control of profiteering in their departments. The Department of Jus- 
tice told me that they had it on the run. The Secret Service is prying 
it out of hidden corners. It is being made the most hideous form of 
unpopularity in the land. The greedy profiteer is abhorred in Wash- 
ington. It will sometimes be granted that a pro-German is honest; it is 
always granted that a pro-German is entitled to the consideration which 
the law awards him. But the profiteer is outside the pale. He is scum. 
The President has denounced him. The Cabinet has denounced him. 
Army and Naval officers have excoriated him. The soldier and the sol- 
dier's kin loathe him. There is no defense for him anywhere. No 
matter who or what he is, he has neither^ast influence, wealth or power 
enough to gain him a shred of respect. 

AMERICAN BUSINESS TWO-THIRDS PATRIOTIC. 

A Cabinet member told me that two-thirds of American manufac- 
turers are patriotic and "one-third are overcome by the business in- 
stinct." This Cabinet member has curbed profiteering in his depart- 
ment by saying to the manufacturer: 

"You make this article, and we'll adjust the price later. I will send 
a man down to your place to study your processes and see what it 
ought to cost." 

This man has reduced the price of steel, powder and cotton to the 
government. Under his pressure cotton prices have gone down 20 per 
cent. He aims at a 30 per cent reduction. When he says that he has 
profiteering "pretty largely under control," the facts seem to confirm 
his statement. 

I was told that "no one is getting what he was getting when war 
broke out," the reductions have been so swift and general. 

The excess profits tax is a good thing for the man who refuses to 
make excess profits. Otherwise they are a bad thing for the public, be- 
cause the public pays them. In 1916, United States Steel made $250,- 
000,000. In 1917, $400,000,000. The payment of the excess profits tax 
still left them with as much as they had in 1916. The public paid the 
difference. In a roundabout way the government got it at last. 

The fixing of maximum prices throughout the country has had one 
good effect^ — it has halted the wild upward flight of prices, and has 
stabilized the runaway market. But it has had another effect: the 
maximum price fixed by the Government usually becomes the minimum 
price charged by the dealer. Coal is the one notable exception to this 
rule. Zinc has been sold below cost since we went to war. 

One difficulty in fixing prices is this: it may cost a certain amount to 

—33— 



produce a given article today, but the firm producing it may have lost 
or invested $5,000,000 in getting to the point where it can produce at 
the present cost. Ought the price to be^ fixed so that five years of 
experiment and loss can be realized upon? One shipbuilding com- 
pany's profits have jumped from S per cent to 70 per cent in a year, 
but for ten years the company had sunk million after million with no 
returns. Ought that fact to be considered in fixing prices? There is 
a haunting fear amongst some business men that the vast investments 
the}^ have made to accommodate the needs of the government will be 
dead losses when war ends. And yet, other men, in this position, say — 
"It's all right; if we lose, that's our contribution to the war." There 
was one firm in the United States producing a certain instrument. It 
could easily supply the entire nation's needs, in time of peace. But its 
whole output at top speed was only 5 per cent of the war needs of the 
government. War has compelled the erection of 15 plants producing an 
article for which there will be an infinitesimal market after the war. 
Ought the price to be fixed to cover that condition? 

These are a few -of the questions which will enable any one to un- 
derstand that the problem is not a simple one. 

On the whole, there has been more talk aibout profiteering on gov- 
ernment contracts than there has been actual profiteering. The 
brighter side of the matter is the host of American business men who 
have literally said to the government: "Take everything I've got. 
Command every ounce of experience and energy I have. I don't want 
any war profit. You fix the compensation." 

The attitude of the government is illustrated in a placard it puts 
out. At the top is the picture of an American boy in trench helmet 
crouching behind a barbed wire entanglement, and the legend reads: 

"Manufacturer: Before you fix that price- 
Dealer: Before you add that extra profit — 

Workman: Before you strike — ask yourself — 

IS THIS MY BOY?" 

THE PEACE PROFITEER IS WORST. 

The most startling discovery one makes is that profiteering isn't 
peculiar to war at all. War simply showed it up. The light of na- 
tional sacrifice simply revealed the hideous character of profiteering. 
The American people have been victims of profiteers for years. When 
the recent reports of the Federal Trade Commission exposed the enor- 
mous increase in the profits of the packing industry, many people 
jumped to the conclusion that it represented the war profit which 
the meat packers were making out of government war orders. But 
the bulk of it came out of the people in their daily buying. Our whole 
commercial system is shot through with sheer profiteering. I am not 
saying that. Conservative men, themselves drafted into public serv- 
ice from business life, who would much rather say something else, 
say it. They are where they can see it, and they know. 

The Alien Property Custodian takes over great German controlled 
industries supplying the American people in staple articles, and what 
does he find? A 6 per cent profit divided amongst stockholders, and 
$4,000,000 divided between 12 executives. 

The Botany Worsted Mills, of Passaic, N. J., did a $28,000,000 busi- 
ness under its German owners the year before the war, of which $7,- 
000,000 was profit. 

A certain industry in this country admitted that in the last three 
years it had paid out $1,400,000 in "sweetening" purchasing agents who 
bought its goods for the firms they represented. The people paid 
that. 

— 34— 



How was this fact discovered? Very easily. The Government is 
more alarmed about the profiteering being practiced among the people 
than about profiteering practiced upon itself. The Government has 
taken care of itself in that respect, now it wants to take care of the 
people. It is uncovering a mass of information that makes the war 
profiteer look like a piker. The peace profiteer is the real artist in the 
business. So the Government is looking into various businesses 
necessary to the people, and it is finding a number of rotten things.. 
It is getting to the bottom of false and misleading advertising. Sev- 
eral nationally known firms have had to change their advertising re- 
cently. It discovered that the trouble with the price of silk, which is 
originally bought by weight, is that it is soaked in a solution of tin to 
make it weigh more heavily and to render it brittle so that it wiU 
break and render a new purchase necessary, and so "speed up busi- 
ness." And in the course of time it came to the question of com- 
mercial bribery noted above. 

The controlling representatives in many lines of business have 
been on the carpet in Washington before the Federal Trade Commis- 
sion. There have been many pleas and protests: men have said that 
their practices, though wrong, were so well established that no busi- 
ness could be done without them. The representatives of the Govern- 
ment have consistently maintained in every case that the morally right 
course could neiver prove disastrous, and thus far the facts sustain 
them in this. Trade has been started out on the new line, and has 
come to like it after becoming accustomed to it. 

In the case of commercial bribery, in the line of business noted 
above, the case was different. The system of bribery started by the 
manufacturers had become so costly, and the bribed clientele were be- 
coming so predatory, that the leaders of the industry were glad to have 
the Government step in and save them from the practice they had 
established. 

CLEANING UP AMERICAN BUSINESS. 

In buying the enormous quantities of supplies required for the army, 
the Government has discovered scores of commercial tricks that have 
become time-honored and have been practiced on the people for gen- 
erations. The Government is eliminating these, and the public will 
benefit. Business in America from now on, and especially after the 
war, is going to be cleaner than it has ever been. The changes being 
wrought really approximate the results that might be expected of a 
social revolution. 

The real question of profiteering isn't here in Washington; it is back 
in every city in the land. The profiteer, consciously or not, is of alien 
spirit. He arouses discontent amongst the people. Indirectly he aids 
the enemy. He must be curbed wherever found. 

"Why don't they put these big profiteers in jail, instead of calling 
them on the carpet and correcting them?" 

For three reasons: First, the law is not that drastic as yet; sec- 
ond, these big producers are needed on the job; third, the present sys- 
tem is working like a charm. 

Arrest a man for practicing these time-honored methods of the 
gentle art of profiteering, and you must try him before a jury of his 
peers, in his own home district. He is usually willing to give up the 
practice the moment a Government official points it out to him: it is 
possible he has never seen it in the moral and universal light before. 
But if you try to stain his name and dishonor his family by throwing 
him into a cell, he is going to fight you with all his millions and per- 
haps beat you in court. He will stop if you tell him; but he will fight 

_35_ 



to the end to avoid the disgrace of jail. If the desired object can be 
achieved the easier way, if the man can be kept at work producing for 
the Government and will institute a juster method of dealing with the 
people— especially in cases where the community has never looked 
upon his practices as a crime — isn't the more effective way the better 
way? The Government is achieving without law, by mere exposure, 
advice and insistence, what it could not achieve in a long time, and 
never without stubborn fights, by criminal law. 

And the men thus called in and admonished become auxiliary 
agents of the movement. A man goes home from Washington and in- 
stitutes the new method proposed by the Government. In a few weeks 
he notices that his nearest competitor is going on in the same old way. 
He writes to Washington: "Didn't you advise Mr. So-and-So about 
the undesirability of the practice you talked to me about? I notice he 
is still going on in the old way." And thus the whole industry is 
cleaned up. Indeed, so much of the work comes this way that it keeps 
the Federal Trade Commission quite busy. 

"You must cease and desist," is what the Government says. And 
they do. 

That is why I said that profiteering has entirely changed its charac- 
ter: it isn't a Government plague exclusively nor even largely now; 
-it becomes daily less of a Government problem. The "fly-by-nights" 
as the secret service men call contract brokers — the worst type that has 
appeared, men without capital or experience — are being drastically 
cleaned out. Indeed, it may be said they have entirely disappeared. 

At the beginning of the war only one thing was essential — Produc- 
tion'. The Government could not delay matters by haggling about 
prices. But, with production begun, with all the wheels whirring, 
with the stream of supplies pouring out, the Government could then 
return to the secondary matter of prices. Money was never a cause 
of anxiety; the Government could always tax the profits so heavily as 
to render them not worth the gathering; but production was abso- 
lutely vital. Both matters are now adjusted. 

If you want to see a profiteer, don't come to Washington. Look 
at home. If you find him, the Government will help you get rid of 
him. 



■ ' ^» 6-^ 



The Secretary of War at Close Range 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6— The Secretary of War consented to 
receive me at a most interesting moment. The American drive in 
France was at its height. Excited throngs crowded around every 
bulletin board. High officials of the Government whose sons are at 
the front forgot their station for the moment and became only anxious 
fathers, haunting the sources of information to learn if perchance a 
dear name had appeared in the lists. 

The outer office of the Secretary was filled with men waiting to see 
him. There were staff officers, representatives of foreign governments, 
United States Senators, and certain men in uniform who quietly came 
and went. The big room was very quiet, with an air of suppressed 
excitement. Some of us beguiled the time by surveying the memen- 
toes gathered there — the flag that draped Lincoln't coffin, the flag that 
floated over Sumter, the swords of great generals and the painted 
portraits of the Secretaries of War for the last century. It is an 
ornate room, crowded with associations and replete with history. And 
now it was seeing more history made than had been crowded into the 
whole previous term of the nation's life. 

Suddenly an inner door opened, and a slim man of short stature 
appeared, stepping lithely forward. The eyes behind the shining 
pince-nez made a swift survey of the room. He approached this man 
and that, disposing of their errands quickly, but without haste. He 
had none of the air of getting rid of people, but only of turning his 
mind immediately to their business and dispatching it. Presently he 
was hearing that a Detroit News representative was studying the War 
Department and would like to make a survey of the Secretary of War 
— would it be at all possible? — the Secretary was a very busy man, 
of course, but any courtesy, quite at the Secretary's convenience, would 
be deeply appreciated. 

From the standpoint of time, it was quite possible, the Secretary 
was saying, but from the standpoint of policy — - However, it was soon 
arranged that at 10 o'clock on the morrow I should be shown into 
the inner sanctum of the Secretary of War. 

The appointed hour found the Secretary closeted with the Chief 
of Staff, but word soon came through that the Detroit visitor would 
be received. Two rooms beyond the waiting room is the sanctum of 
the Secretary. It is a small room, as Washington Government offices 
go, and the plainest of them all, except the President's, although it 
lacks the quiet dignity of the President's office. An old oil portrait 
of George Washington, as first commander-in-chief of the American 
Armies; another of Henry Knox, the first Secretary of War; an auto- 
graphed photograph of Brand Whitlock, American Minister to Bel- 
gium, a desk and tabic heaped with documents, and a few chairs — 
these complete its furnishing and ornamentation. The telephone is 
not on the desk, but when the ibell tinkles Secretary Baker must needs 
rise and go to a phone table in the corner. Needless to say, that bell 
■does not tinkle except in important matters; the offices of the White 
House, it may be. For inter-departmental conversations the Secretary 
uses a speaking device on his desk. 

THE SECRETARY OF WAR LIGHTS HIS PIPE. 

In his office, Newton D. Baker is a most frank and direct conver- 
sationalist. It being an hour taken out of the midst of a busy morn- 

—37— 



ing, he permitted himself to relax, filled and lighted his pipe and . 
allowed his legs to find the top of a convenient table. As his answers 
to my questions brought him to greater animation of manner, his feet 
came to the floor again, and his pipe was removed to permit a flow 
of perfectly chosen words. As everyone knows who has read the 
report of Secretary Baker's testimony at the hearing held by the Senate 
committee, he is in command of the choicest extempore literary expres- 
sions. He approximates the President in this respect. 

It was understood that I was not to attempt to quote his words, 
but there were no restrictions placed on the topics of conversation. 
Naturally, I wanted to know a number of things, and in no instance 
did the Secretary of War return a refusal or an evasive answer. The 
impression I received of him was of a courageous type of mind buckled 
to a task of extraordinary difficulty and complexity, and swinging it 
with a confident sense of mastery. But there was a singular lack of 
personal pride in the Secretary; the mastery was mingled v\'ith a 
wholly unconscious and natural modesty — not the sort of modesty 
which would deter its possessor from tackling ibig tasks, else Mr. 
Baker would not have accepted the war portfolio in such critical times 
as marked his appointment, but the sort of modesty which would ever 
prevent him from considering his achievement as of extraordinary 
merit. 
DOMINANT BUT NOT DOMINEERING. 

I had heard of a difTferent impression received of Secretary Baker. 
I had heard him described as "cocksure." Certainly he is not hesitant 
nor apologetic; no man in his position could be. He possesses strength 
and a large degree of mastery — he simply must possess these to remain 
where he is. More and more, here in Washington, one comes to feel 
that the man whom the President retains in a cabinet position must 
fill the office, or he does not stay. And while Secretary Baker is 
dominant, he is not domineering; he does not invade nor overbear 
another's mental province. He is always seeking the best way, and 
he follows it where he finds it, whether it originates with himself or 
a competent subordinate. 

It was, as I have said, a dramatic moment in the Americans' part 
in the war. Through a little door on the other side of the room came 
messages directly from the battlefield. The day was well advanced 
in France, and it was a day of glory, a. day whose luster can not die. 

The reader will do well to refrain from believing that it is only 
my personal enthusiasm that leads me to say that the whole com- 
plexion of the war was changing; in a very expressive phrase, which 
is not my own, the complexion of the Allies had changed from an 
anemic white to a glowing wholesome pink, and events were trans- 
piring whose effect on the struggle will be epochal. It was simply 
impossible to contemplate the deeds of the Americans, and what was 
transpiring amongst the German armies, without the thrill which 
comes from the consciousness of living and being- in touch, at least 
physically, with a high moment in human history. 

The man who sat there, so apparently calm in his chair, was indeed 
in a state of suppressed emotion. There was nothing in his demeanor 
to indicate it, but such, nevertheless, vv'as the fact. The public knew 
much; he knew much more. Moreover, his knowledge extended to 
both sides of the struggle. He KNEW. And knowing, he could not 
but feel, and very deeply. Lest there should be possibility of misin- 
terpretation in what I have written, let m.e add that there was nothing 
in the complete knowledge of the situation that could temper the 
public joy. It would be rather enhanced. 

— S8— 



THE SECRETARY'S PIPE GOES OUT. 

The pipe went out soon after it was lighted; only a few puffs had 
been taken, and it was not relit. I was interested to know what were 
the Secretary's feelings during the period when public criticism fell 
upon him so unsparingly. It is a hobby of mine that if we can know 
how a man takes adversity, we have a clear clue to his character. I 
found the Secretary absolutely removed from any personal resentment 
toward the criticism that had been visited on him, even when it was 
palpably and unfairly personal. He knew that it was inevitable that 
some things should go wrong in so new and vast an undertaking as 
his Department was charged with; he knew that it was humanly im- 
possible, with the comparatively few military men of experience whom 
he had at his disposal, to achieve the colossal task of preparing for, 
calling and training millions of men, without somewhere a degree of 
hardship, delay and even failure appearing. The country now knows, 
of course, that the surprising fact is that so few of these untoward 
things occurred. 

Secretary Baker searched the criticism thoroughly for helpful sug- 
gestions. With the entire country applying its mind to the proiblem, 
he felt that somewhere a suggestion of merit v\'Ould appear, and when 
it did he profited by it. If he regretted anything in the storm that 
assailed him, it was the assumption, the unfounded assumption that 
the attitude — the basic and determined attitude, of> the War Department 
was responsible for any delay or hardship that had occurred. There 
is a vast difference between mistakes that occur through inexperience 
or insufficient equipment, and mistakes that inhere in the very attitude 
of the directors of an enterprise; the former can be corrected, but the 
latter have their roots very deep. 

AS WHEN A FOG LIFTS. 

And yet one day — it was the day the Secretary's complete and 
illuminating statement went to the country — the atinosphere palpably 
changed, as when a fog lifts or the sun shines after a storm. The 
change was entirely psychic, and yet so sudden, so immediate and 
extensive, as to be almost tangible. A complete change in the War 
Department would not have been comparable with it. The Secretary 
has not been able satisfactorily to analj^ze it for himself. It came in 
the line of duty, just as the criticism and antagonism had come. He 
had simply stated the fact, the barest fact, without defense against 
criticism, without recrimination upon his detractors. And the fact won. 

That is another element in Secretary Baker's psychology. In com- 
mon with the Wilson Administration, he has a dominant quality of 
practical idealism. He is an idealist on the human side with a heavy 
balance of realism on the executive side. He has an extraordinary 
reverence for t-he Fact, so real a reverence as to rquire that the word 
be capitalized. And yet he knows that facts sometimes obscure the 
Truth, and that is where his saving idealism comes in. 

BEARING A HEAVY BURDEN. 

Secretary Baker is bearing a great burden, and is not sparing him- 
self. He seems to be aware that, if necessary, he must wear himself 
out, and then his successor must wear himself out, and whoever holds 
the office must continue to give and give without stint until the war 
is won. In that, the Secretary shares the soldier's spirit. All that 
matters is that he discharge his duty at the top of his power, as long 
and as wisely as he can. His personal fate is as nothing compared 
with the great task which must be rolled forward to completion. 

—39— 



To this end his working day is a long one. Daylight hours are 
filled with conferences. Until 11 o'clock the Secretary sees the chiefs 
of staff and bureau chiefs. From 11 until 12 he sees people by appoint- 
ment. He lunches at his desk. The afternoon is devoted to a variety 
of /business. This is the schedule, so to speak. As a matter of fact 
it is broken in upon at all points. War business, with its unexpected- 
ness and insistence is very indifferent to office schedules. Thus it hap- 
pens that the night lights burn long in the Secretary's office, and the 
important subordinates of the Department are always on call. 

Secretary Baker reserves the night hours for what is in some 
respects the hardest work of all, the reading of court-martial reports 
and the making of his recommendations thereon. He holds the fate 
of officers and men in his hands, and his recommendations to the 
President usually determine the discipline to be administered. 

It is not easy to sit through the night hours weighing matters that 
affect men's careers unalterably. The Secretary is scrupulously careful 
that haste or insufficient proof shall not result in injustice. And yet 
he is sometimes compelled by the necessities of the Army itself to 
approve sentences that destroy young officers' desire to see service in 
France, and to dismiss them from the Army, li those affected could 
see the painstaking search which the Secretary makes to ascertain 
that all the court-martial proceedings and findings have been right 
and regular, they would be impressed by the profound conscientious- 
ness and humane consideration which governs the actions of the chief 
of the War Department. 

And when this is done, and the hours of sleep have passed, the 
same long grind of work marks the new day. Sunday is scarcely an 
exception, for war is not a Sabbatarian. 

A VITAL, INCISIVE, CAPABLE MAN. 

And yet the Secretary of War, though naturally pale of countenance, 
gives every indication of unexhausted vitality. He is ibright of eye, 
alert of movement, incisive in speech, all betokening a smoothly func- 
tioning body and mind. Often a busy man who is quite competent 
to_ carry and discharge heavy duties, is irritated by requests such as 
mine was. To indulge in mere conversation seems a waste, and the 
very thought of it brings friction to the mind. But the ease with 
which Secretary Baker turned from work to our conversation, and at 
its completion was ready for the stress of work again, bespoke a well- 
controlled mind. He did not consider it an irritating interruption to 
be asked to do a favor for a strange newspaper man. 

The War Department is the most silent of all departments of the 
Government, except perhaps the Department of State. And yet Secre- 
tary Baker's inclination is toward giving the people all the information 
it issafe to give. But military necessity hedges him on all sides. And 
I think the interview he accorded me was a sign that he has not for- 
gotten that the people like to have a glimpse now and then of their 
more notable public servants. 



—40— 



Some Achievements of the Army 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7.— The American Army has spoken for 
itself. The articles to follow are an attempt to give a general view of 
the achievements of the War Department. 

It is probable that the readers of this series will note an important 
omission. There will be no article devoted to the airplane activities 
of the United States. Very good reasons exist for this omission, and 
they are not of a character to reflect unfavorably on the Government's 
achievements in that department. 

On the contrary, a most thrilling story could ibe told — if it could 
be told. But it seems to be best, for the present, that it be left 
untold. The impression is that too much has been said already and 
that a grand tactical error was made in the beginning when our air- 
plane program was thrown broadcast for all the vs^orld to read. The 
Government is quite well satisfied with the present silence, even if it 
means that in many quarters our airplane program is believed to have 
failed. Such a state of opinion serves the Government's main purpose 
as well as any other could. The' principal desideratum in this matter 
at this time is silence. 

And yet it is possible to indicate a few facts which ought to reassure 
the anxious citizen. The figures I shall give are several months old, 
and it cannot be indicated how much they have changed in the inter- 
vening time. 

When we declared war, our total aeronautic force comprised 

65 officers and 1,120 men. A little time ago the force comprised 

160,000 officers and men. 

In April, 1917, at the declaration of war, we had three flying 

fields. We now have 28, with more preparing. 

We had, some time ago, 5,000 aviators who had completed 

their training, 7,000 wlio were in process of training, and 4,000 

who were awaiting training. 

Our aviators flew 3,000 hours a day, which is 195,000 miles a 

day, or eight times around the earth. 

In 1917, when we went to war, we had 300 planes. Some 

months ago we had about 7,000 planes, and there were American 

airplane squadrons over the lines in numbers that would fill 

every American breast with pride. 

AN AMERICAN MONTH EQUALS A EUROPEAN YEAR. 

As a sidelight on our production capacity, consider this fact: Eng- 
land, with her perfect war organization and four years of war ex- 
perience can turn out in a year only as many Rolls-Royce airplane 
motors as the United States is now turning out in one month. The 
Liberty motor is the crux of the airplane situation, and the United 
States is dominant in that particular field. England, Italy and France 
are clamoring for the Liberty motor, and it will be the one motor of 
the war. 

We can produce them 20 times faster than they will ever be needed, 
and -we are producing them faster than all the Allies combined are 
producing their types of engines after four years of experience. The 
explanation is the American method of quantity production. 

We have been only a year in the war, and yet these are the facts, 
given with much understatement. Our program was so big that it 
took time to start. It takes longer to get a battleship under way tham 

— a — 



a motor boat. It takes longer to make a cannon than a toy pistol. But 
the battleship and cannon achieve more than niotor boat or toy pis- 
tol. We went in on a big scale. The very weight of it made the be- 
ginning slow. But we are achieving a momentum that all the world 
can not stop. 

If the people could see some of our big battle-planes — veritable 
dreadnaughts of the air — with their diversified armament, their aerial 
artillery, their invinciible power, there would be no question as to 
where we stand in this matter. 

THE ERA OF EXPERIMENT IS PAST. 

The airplane productive forces have got their stride. The mistakes 
and delays that have occurred will show no moral turpitude, but only 
the difficulties incident to a new and colossal task. And when the 
people of the United States see American battle planes crossing the 
Atlantic ocean in long lines under their own power, they will know 
that the nation has achieved its purpose. 

As this article is being written an article appears in a weekly mag- 
azine wherein Orville Wright is quoted as doubting the attainment 
of 125 miles an hour in the air, and saying that it is hard to l)elieve 
aviators' estimates of speed because they are usually mistaken. That 
is all very well, but scientific instruments are not mistaken, and natu- 
rally the Government does not depend on aviators' guesses for its 
facts. There is being attained 150 miles an hour in this country, and 
not by show aviators either, and not in show machines. 

So, in the absence of a special airplane story at this stage of the 
series let these facts serve to indicate what the entire airplane story 
would be like if it were released. 

Having come thus far by the help of statistics, it may be of interest 
to continue with them to the end of the chapter. Indeed, in attempting 
"to give an idea of the vast achievements of the War Department, sta- 
tistics are the only possible medium. But they are not mere cold 
figures; they are vital, they pulsate with life. 

By this time a sufficient number of Americans have come in touch 
with war to enable all of us to realize that the units which make up 
statistics are themselves vitally connected with human beings. 

When the United States declared war, it had an army of 9,524 
officers and 145,493 men. 

On June 15, we had 10.750.000 men registered for military service, 
an army of 2,010,000 men under arms, in addition to which were 202,510 
officers, and we had an army of more than One Million Men in France. 
All of this army and 19-20ths of the officer personnel had to be manu- 
factured out of the most militarily inexperienced civilians to be found 
on earth. 

U. S. MADE GOOD FROM THE FIRST. 

And these things were accomplished not only one year after we 
had entered the war, but in NINE MONTHS after the first National 
Armj'' training camp opened its gates. 

Several months ago there were sufficient rifles on hand for 2- 
000,000 men, INCLUDING A YEAR OF WAR WASTAGE! Of the 
new model of rifle 1,000,000 had been produced up to a date two 
months ago, and production was proceeding then — it has been in- 
creased since — at the rate of 50,000 a week. 

At that same date two months ago 30,000 machine guns had been 
completed, and 350,000 were on order. Of course the number com- 
pleted will be much more than 30,000 when this article appears. Be- 

— 42 — 



sides there is the wonderful powderless centrifugal gun which fires 
16,000 shots a minute, and which is giving astounding results in the 
tests being conducted in secret places round about the Capital. 

There are 16 new plants producing cannon in this country, and 
more are in process of construction. 

Four new shell factories are under operation, in addition to those 
which existed before. 

In April, 1917, there were 2>7 steel shipyards in the' United States; 
Today there are 72. And in the original 27 yards, the shipways have 
been increased from 162 to 195. 

In April, 1917, we had 24 wooden shipyards; in the same month a 
year later, 80. 

In all there are 162 shipbuilding plants in the United States, in- 
cluding the largest and most complete in the world. 

One section of the War Department — the Ordnance — , it is — em- 
ploys 7,500 civilians, so greatly has the pressure of business increased, 
and is doing business with 3,300 iirms. 

The lumber used in the Cantonments would make a wide sidewalk 
four times around the world. It was all cut from the forests, made 
into building material, transported to 90 points in the country, and 
put into cities that housed 40,000 men each — and was done in a space 
of FOUR MONTHS after the declaration of war. 

The Cantonments now built — and more are being created all the 
time — would house the populations of Arizona, Delaware, Nevada, 
Wyoming and Alaska. 

To supply the war organization now in France, the equivalent of a 
standard freight train in each direction every 25 minutes is necessary. 

Aside from having to equip a new harbor, build Cantonments, hos- 
pitals and supply depots in France, we have had to construct 900 miles 
of new railroad, every rail, and brace and spike of which was made 
in and transported from the United States. American engineers got 
the ties by cutting down French forests. 

THE BEST SUPPLIED ARMY ON EARTH. 

A 90-day supply of food always is kept on hand for the army in 
France. This is in addition to the emergency rations. A 30-day sup- 
ply goes with each ship load of troops. In reality there is always 
from 98 to 100 days' food supply at the American depots in France, 
and it is said these depots are so carefully located that no possible 
misfortune of war can throw them into the hands of the enemy. 

A troop transport served 210,000 meals on a recent trip across, 
and delivered 3,750 tons of food at the port of disembarkation. 

It is utterly impossible to conceive the magnitude of the achieve- 
ments of the Government. Any single item is nearly impossible of 
realization. 

Can you imagine a laundry basket containing 6,057,857 pieces 

of washing? 

Can you imagine a little cobbling job involving the repair 

of 907,466 pairs of shoes? 

And then there is the work to be done in spare hours during Au-. 
gust— the delivery of 1,000,000 of the $50 Liberty Bonds of the sec- 
ond issue, subscribed for, and now paid for, by soldiers in training in 
the United States. It is a great army that gives itself, and then gives 
$50,000,000 toward the support of the war! Where could it happen 
save in America? 

Can you imagine a little economy feature like this? — maybe some 
day you will discover that your favorite perfumed glycerine soap can 
not be bought, and then you may think of this little story: 

—43— 



When the Army gets hold of a large lot of glycerine soap, it 
extracts the glycerine and the 15 per cent of sugar which it con- 
tains, and leaves the soap! The glycerine goes into explosives; 
the sugar is a food. Maybe we shall have to leave off washing 
our faces in food and explosives material for a while. 
The Army is going to extract some of the tricks from American 
business, and it is going to do wonders for the common consumer. 
Take the housewife who buys dried fruit, as an example. She is buy- 
ing 50 per cent steam and 50 per cent fruit pulp. 

When fruits are dried to preserve them, they are steamed again to 
make them puffier and heavier for selling. The wholesaler buys them 
dry and light and sells them wet and heavy. It is a worse hoax than 
filling cattle with water before the weighing. Well, the Army has got 
on to that little trick. 

It gets dry weight and no more. 

Besides, dryness is a preventive against spoilage and worms. 

THE ARMY IS A CAREFUL BUYER. 

The Army is going to teach American business -a lesson in packing 
shipments, too. The marvels of our transport, in the face of de- 
pleted shipping facilities, is partly accounted for by Army methods of 
packing. Tonnage is kept down by the discarding of the packing box 
and case wherever possible. 

Clothing and blankets are compressed under machines and then 
burlapped, thus saving cargo space and lumber. There is no break- 
age in burlap. Moreover, all the stevedores "over there" being wom- 
en, the burlap packages are more easily handled. Can you make a 
mental picture of French women serving as dock wallopers to get 
food and supplies to the American boys? 

The Army knows economy. It has lately saved 30,000,000-ton miles 
for New England alone by the order which prohibits the use of anthra- 
cite coal south of Washington and west of Pittsburgh — not to speak 
of the money thus saved. 

It means that the Army is doing its best to let the people have coal 
next winter. 

FILLING THE SOLDIERS' LARDER. 

But the tale is endless, the facts simply staggering. T close with a 
point that I know all parents of soldiers to be interested in. When 
in camp, no question came oftener to me than this: "Do the soldiers 
get good food and plenty of it?" 

Of course they did. I knew they did, because I lived on it. But as 
I was passing out of the Quartermaster's Department one day I saw 
this list publicly posted for bids. It indicates the quantity and variety 
of the food supply of the men in France: 

Bacon, 1,336,935 pounds. Corned beef, 150,000 cans. Corn flour, 
112,000 pounds. Blackberry jam, 31,961 pounds. Coffee, 10,000 pounds. 
Tea, 250,000 pounds. Butter, 456,330 pounds. Flavoring extracts, 145,- 
000 bottles. Chocolate, 96,000 pounds. Cheese, 260,000 pounds. Candy 
'sticks, 9,500 cans. Ginger ale, 50,000 packages. Macaroni, 55,000 
pounds. Molasses, 50,000 pounds. Mince meat, 2,600 cans. Olives, 2,- 
800 cans. Oysters, 11,000 cans. 

And in addition to scores of staples there were pickles, sausages, 
shrimps, spinach, corn starch, gelatin, fish, hominy, beef extract, ham 
and many more things I had no time to copy. 

Some grocery order for one day! — but then, your Uncle Sam has a 
large and hearty family, and he takes good care of them. 

—44— 



There were also such orders as 40,000,000 pairs of shoes, 2,000,000 
pairs of rubber hip boots, and 47,000,000 undershirts on the books. 

After I had dug out these facts and many more, I found my feel- 
ings adequately interpreted by a placard an exuberant subordinate of 
the War Department had stuck up in his busy little office. It was just 
the right combination of fact, pride and pardonable boastfulness. It 
read: 

" 'It Can't Be Done— But Here It Is.' " 



--48— 



The Man Who Made the Selective Draft 



WASHINGTON, Aug. 8. — Perhaps no Army officer's name, except 
Pershing's, is so widely known amongst Americans as that of Maj.- 
Gen. Enoch H. Crowder. This is by no means due to the mihtary 
achievements or personal qualities of Gen. Crowder, but is entirely 
accounted for by the new relations which the war made necessary 
between the people of the United States and .their military organization. 

When the people, through their representatives, elected to form 
themselves into the Army of Democracy, some orderly method had 
to be devised for registering, selecting and inducting them into the 
service, and the man who prepared these paths and opened these doors 
was the Provost Marshal General of the United States. His office 
was, as it were, the gateway through which the civilian passed to 
military service. 

It was Gen. Crowder who appointed and directed the registration 
boards with their various medical and other assistants. It was he who 
arranged the intricate numbering system and supervised the making of 
the call for men. Ultimately, into 10,750,000 American homes the name 
Crowder came with the authority of the United States behin(i- it; 
families by the thousand viewing it with a certain dread; young men 
by the thousands hailing it with the superb joy of adventurous youth. 

It was in some senses a terrible responsibility to place on one 
individual's name. To the short-sighted and antagonistic the thought 
came that "this was Crowder's doings." It is no reflection on the 
loyalty of the more domestic members of American families, those 
who ibelieved their country right but dreaded the stern issue of war 
as it might touch their families, to say that the signature, "Enoch H. 
Crowder, Provost Marshal General," stood out in an ominous light. 

That is to say, everyone knew the name; few knew the man. They 
saw his picture in the papers, he typified to them the power they had 
delegated to their civil and military leaders, but as to what manner of 
person he was and how he came to be assigned to the simply colossal 
task that was laid upon him, few knew. Indeed, few know now. 

It is not the purpose of this article to describe the selective draft. 
We are too close to it to be able fully to realize its historic import. 
Only by exercising an act of will and returning ourselves to the state 
of mind which all the associations of the word "conscript" awakened 
in us five years ago, can we even dimly realize the tremendous decision 
the American people made when they consented to the war and the 
draft. 

The draft was implied in any war undertaken under modern con- 
ditions. It was not the act of the Government going out and taking 
citizens by force; it was the act of citizens themselves, choosing and 
sending men for the common defense; and in the fairest way, and most 
business-like way, instituting a rule of universal service from which 
neither wealth nor social position, influence nor any purely personal 
excuse could exempt a man. 

THE FAIREST WAY TO RAISE AN ARMY. 

In Civil War times the ability to raise a few hundred dollars 
exempted a man from military service. But we have lived to see 
millionaires sleeping on iron cots, day laborers their bunkies; we have 
lived to see social favorites on the drill fields, dock wallopers their 
next in line; we have lived to see the mechanic's son commanding the 

—46— 



statesman's son in the ranks — the fairest, most successful, most 
democratic mode of raising an army ever adopted. 

Only a democracy could have done it. The draft, be it said, proved 
our democracy by an acid test. 

But did you ever speculate on the chances the draft had of failing? 
No matter how perfectly it had been devised, it assuredly would have 
failed if the people had not wanted it. But wanting it as they did, 
willingly abiding by its method, the draft still had 1,000 chances to 
fail because of the vastness of the work and the vaster inexperience 
of America in such matters. 

Odium or credit? — which was it to be for this name "Crowdcr" 
that had become so ubiquitous in the land? 

Be sure that one man was keenly alive to all the possibilities, and 
he was the man who bore that name. 
WHO IS THIS CREATOR OF ARMIES? 

Who is he? How did he know just what to do? Where did he 
learn the intricacies of the selective draft? By intricacies I mean, of 
course, the problems which he met; the operation of the draft itself, 
like all great things, is simple. 

And that is the story. When you know it you will be grateful that 
there was a Crowder in the country at the nick of time. 

It ought to be obvious to you, however, that Gen. Crowder's 
knowledge was not assembled in a night. And yet it must be equally 
obvious that there has never been in the term of his ^military experience 
a draft on which he could practice. He was 2 years old when the 
Civil War ibegan. 

I am not writing this story with Gen. Crowder's consent. He is a 
modest man. Congress wanted to make him a lieutenant-general a 
few weeks aga, in recognition of his work, but he refused; he said the 
greater part of the credit was due to the draft boards who worked 
with him. That was no grandstand play; it was characteristic of the 
man. 

It would be extremely difficult to gain his consent to a story about 
himself, and I did not press him so hard as to bring down a flat 
prohibition. I had my facts before I went to him. I only wanted to 
know whether I was misinformed. The story I put up to him was 
the barest skeleton of what appears here, with every shred of purely 
personal matter stripped off. People who know him best supplied 
the flesh and blood of it. 

Maj.-Gcn. Crowder is aware, I think, of the delicacy of his relation 
to American homes, He it is who stands, figuratively speaking, at the 
door of the home and says to the young man, "Your place is ready 
now." The young man has been waiting with a good deal of eager 
excitement for his coming, but there are folks in the background who 
had never expected to live through that experience. 

Aside from his natural disinclination to publicity, I think this is the 
reason Gen. Crowder would much rather not be exploited in the public 
prints. His name has stood at the doors of so many homes, his 
coming has meant so much in so many different ways, that I think he 
feels that something like a sacred silence should be observed 
regarding it. 

He and the boys have gone out together from the doors of millions 
of homes; if praise is to be bestowed he would rather have it go to 
the boys. He was a soldier doing the duty the people had laid on 
him; they were young civilians changing their lives for their country's 
sake — I am sure he would have the public think of them, and of 
himself not at all. 

—47— 



This would be affectation in some men; it is Gen. Crowder's nature. 
He is a human sort of a man. He wishes to be courteous to everybody 
and he usually succeeds, though often against odds. And so far from 
being an ogre invading the homes and lives of Americans, he has lived 
through 10,000,000 men's experiences, and the sensitive surface of his 
heart has not been worn hard. I thoroughly believe that. 

HOW DID HE DO IT? 

But how was he able to organize the draft— a thing that had never 
been done before? How did it happen that at the precise moment of 
time the man who could do the job was there, in the War Department,' 
ready to do it? An enemy might answer: "Why, the United States 
Government was preparing for this all the time. All it had to do was 
to go to a pigeon-hole and take out the plans." Such an answer would 
not be true. It is true, however, that one officer happened to know 
how to proceed. 

We are going to believe in destiny after the war — 'just as we now 
look back and believe that Lincoln was a man of destiny, and just as 
we all believe that a Higher Power has control of the destinies of the 
Republic. And I have thought that Enoch H. Crowder is a man of 
destiny, preparing through long and arduous and obscure years, and 
appearing after 36 years of fairly commonplace military life in the 
precise position to do the precise work the nation in its emergency 
called for. 

I have reason to believe that Gen. Crowder would not indorse this 
view of himself as a man of destiny. It doesn't appeal to him at all. 
But let me tell the story, that the reader may draw his own conclusion. 

Thirty-seven years ago, Enoch Herbert Crowder, a Missouri youth, 
graduated from West Point at the age of 22. Five years later he took 
his law degree at the University of Missouri. His military life began, 
as most young officers' did, on the plains of the W^est. They say he 
was not a robust man, and- he does not appear to be robust even now. 
Perhaps it was that, but more likely it was his cast of mind, that led 
him to enter upon a studious existence at his lonely frontier post, 
instead of amusing himself racing horses and playing cards. 

DESTINY KNOCKS AT THE DOOR. 

At any rate, while stationed at Standing Rock, North Dakota, he 
found an old, dust-covered, time-stained Government publication — one 
of those numerous books the Government prints and few people read — 
which contained perhaps the driest reading in the world, from the 
standpoint of a young officer on the frontier. 

It was a report of the Provost Marshal, who held that rank during 
the Civil War. In it he had written the devices he had tried in the 
drafts of those times, wherein they had succeeded and wherein they 
had failed, and being an enthusiast in that l^emote field, he had added 
a study of the draft systems of the world. 

This book fascinated the young officer. His mind hooked itself to 
the subject. He lived with the book, slept with it, and digested every 
rriorsel of its information. Of course it was of no "practical use" to 
him. The war was over; the volunteer system was what our people 
swore by; all talk of drafts was ancient history. 

Nevertheless, with only a student's interest in the subject, and with 
a peculiarly sympathetic insight into the old dead-and-gone Provost 
Marshal's difficulties, which had been so laboriously written out and 
so unceremoniously tossed into the rubbish corners of a hundred army 
Lposts, young- Growd&r could not rid his mind of the matter.. 

—48— 



He has that ibook yet. There may be a copy of it in the Congres- 
sional Library. There may be a few lying lost in undisturbed garrets 
throughout the country. But at least one copy is valued, and that is 
Gen. Crowder's. He never lets it get beyond his reach; perhaps it 
would be more accurate to say that he never lets it get within anybody 
else's reach. 

THE RIGHT MAN IN THE NICK OF TIME. 

That was years ago. When the war came, when it became impera- 
tive to mobilize the largest army of • the most carefully selected 
material in the shortest period of time, who was there to do it? Only 
one post in the army had such a task amongst its stated duties, and 
that was the Provost Marshal's post. And it so happened that the 
young ofificer who had made the mobilization of civilians his specialty 
was the very man who had come through stage after stage — from a 
lieutenant of cavalry, through judge advocate of the army, through 
Secretary of State and Justice for Cuba — to the office of Provost 
Marshal General of the United States. The discovery of the man who 
knew most about such affairs and his appointment to his present post 
were almost coincident, and with both came the imperative need of 
the country. 

Now, that may not be Destiny. Gen. Crowder and I, without 
doubt, disagree on that point. But if there is any other adequate 
name for it, it has failed thus far to suggest itself. At least one man 
is going to continue to believe that decades ago the Destiny that has 
always sent fit servants to the Republic, made in obscurity and in 
seeming aimlessness the choice of a man and a task, and that of this 
m.an it may be truthfully said today, "To this end was he born, and 
for this cause came he into the world." 

It explains, as no other thing can, the superb success and justice 
and democracy of the selective draft system of the United States. 



—49- 



Analyzing the Army's Man Power 



WASHINGTON, Aug. 9.— It is one thing to register 10,000,000 
American men and to call 3,000,000 of them to the colors in the space 
of a few months; it is quite another thing to know what you have got 
when they arrive. 

What you have really got is a segment of the American nation, 
lifted from all the strata of its complex society. You have the rich 
and poor; the trained and unskilled; the adaptable type and the 
phlegmatics; men with initiative — men who have "self-starters" within 
them, and men who have to be pushed like wheelbarrows — -the latter 
type useful in its way, as wheelbarrows are, but not self-motivated. 

You have men who are capable of carrying responsibility, and men 
who instinctively lean; men who can do their best work when all their 
creative faculties are called on, and men who are at their best when 
fulfilling another's plans. Yovi have every type of man to be found in 
the body of the nation, from the highest virility and development of 
mentality to the moron. 

What are you going to do with them? Obviously, you can only do 
with them what they themselves can do or be trained to do. 

There was a soldier named Bieber, for example — a great awkward 
fellow who appeared to be a human bulk of bone and sinew, nothing 
more. When he came to camp they gave him the "once over" and 
assigned him to a pick and shovel. It seemed to be all he was good 
for, and the verdict passed on him seemed to be justified by the results 
he obtained with his pick and shovel. There was nothing to indicate 
that his whole destiny was not wrapped up in those crude yet necessary 
instruments. Obviously, he was one of Nature's born burden-bearers. 

Then one day an order came through the camp which ruffled the 
training officers somewhat because it involved "more paper work." 
Why couldn't Washington leave them alone and let them get on with 
the field training of the men? Thus some officers thought — though, of 
course, they did not think publicly. The order contained a system by 
which the man-power of the Army was to be analyzed and the 
personnel classified. 

WHAT HAPPENED TO PRIVATE BIEBER. 

So the examination of the raw troops again was undertaken and in 
the course of the procedure the pick-and^shovel soldier Bieber was 
reached. The process which the examining officers followed left little 
to their discretion: they were merely following a nearly perfect system 
of man-measurement. 

Of course, in Bieber's case it was going to ibe easy: simply mark 
him down as a good husky laborer. 

But when they put to him the questions which the process com- 
pelled, very marvelous things began to happen. "Main occupation?" 
Well, just working around. "Just what did you do?" Oh, sometimes 
he drove a motor-truck. Discovery No. 1 : this man was being used as 
a sewer digger when the camp was crying for motor men. Well, well! 

"Any experience in electrical work?" Yes, he had fiddled around 
with wireless a little — had a home-constructed plant of his own. Dis- 
covery No. 2: a wireless man! 

"What else?" Well, he'd monkeyed some with photography, and 
the examiner noticed he used scientific terms of which the amateur 

—50— 



kodakist is unaware. Discovery No. 3: a high-grade, scientific 
photographer. 

His photographic work involved the use of chemicals — "Did he 
know anything about chemistry?" Lord, yes; he'd played around with 
that a lot — since the war began he had been fussing around with "this 
here gas question" and he "allowed" it wasn't such a mighty big thing 
as some people thought it. Discoveries No. 4 and No. 5: chemist, 
with a specialty in gas! 

Of course, they do not take a man's mere word for these things. 
The man, in answer to the questions, simply indicates the further lines 
along which the system is to operate, but it is the remaining tests 
provided by the system that produce final proofs. He is "trade-tested," 
as the phrase is, which may mean also "profession-tested" in the 
higher branches. 

The man who says he can handle a motor truck is sent to a motor- 
truck expert, who may wave him toward a motor lying about in pieces 
and tell him to put it together. 

If the soldier allege hiinself to have experience in wireless, he is 
sent for a wireless test, and given a series of stunts of increasing 
difficulty to determine just what grade he belongs in. And so on 
through the series. When they are done with the examinee they 
know exactly what his proficiency is. 

FITTING THE MAN TO THE PLACE. 

The case of Bieber is an exception so far as its details go, but it 
is not an exception so far as it illustrates the system's efficiency in 
eliciting the information an army must have in order to be of the 
highest possible use. The Army does not propose to have square pegs 
in round holes if it can be avoided — and it can be. A man is more 
useful to the Army and on better terms with himself when he is doing 
what by temperament, experience and training he is best fitted to do, 
and by placing him with reference to these qualities it removes a vast 
amount of friction. The Army aims at an organization so smooth it 
would seem to run in oil. 

The Government must thank private industry and initiative for this 
new system of analysis, and especially Dr. Walter Dill Scott, of the 
Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. Dr. Scott's specialty 
has been in research work with reference to salesmanship qualities. 
As the physical director measures men to ascertain their physical 
fitness, so Dr. Scott measures minds and experiences to ascertain 
men's psychical fitness. 

Take two men whose appearance would indicate equal hardihood 
and ability. One man is liable to accident and collapse; under strain 
and difficulty his powers get away from him; while the other has 
a foresight and carefulness which forestall accident — his nature is 
capable of bearing great strain and his powers are never so near the 
top of their efficiency as when he is in a tight place, opposing almost 
insuperable odds. How distinguish the two? By working with them 
for 10 years you might graduall}' attain a knowledge of the peculiar- 
ities of each; but how are you going to learn it the first month they 
are in camp, so that thg emergency of war may be met in the best 
way? That is what the system does. 

In ordinary life, with no emergency at hand, such a system might 
be utilized for the development of men, the strengthening of their weak 
points, and the general cultivation of their powers; but these are war 
times, and its present use is to discover what the man now possesses, 
so to determine where best it may be used. It is what the man has 

—51— 



made of himself in civil life, not what may be made of him now, that 
is disclosed. 

ANALYZING THE ARMY'S OFFICER CORPS. 

In the case of enlisted men industrial and educational history forms 
the groundwork of the investigation. But with officers, a number of 
other considerations enter. Officers' physique, bearing, neatness and 
voice are considered. The voice tells a great story in itself. 

Is he accurate? — or does he guess, get things "about right" and 
deal in generalities. Can he grasp points of view other than his own? — 
some men cannot, and it bespeaks certain limitations. Has he tact? 
Is he self-reliant? Can he go ahead without detailed instruction? Has 
he decision of character? Do men obey him gladly and loyally? — has 
he the faculty of keeping them "for" him all the time? Will he 
shoulder responsibility for his own acts when they are unfavorable to 
him? — or will he wriggle and try to throw it on someone else? What 
are his personal habits? — what does he do when he has nothing else 
to do? What can he do best? — administrate a record system, instruct 
men in the theory of military affairs or train men in the actual work 
itself? When he is confronted by a crisis,, when he gets his men into 
an awkward position on the field, can he quickly form a sensible plan 
to extricate them? 

These things come very near laying a man's personality bare to 
the light. 

In the case of the enlisted men, the system has revealed brilliant 
machinists at work checking vegetables, an X-ray expert carrying a 
rifle, an experienced motorist serving as valet to a mule. One day at 
Camp Meade the post flag stuck at the top of its 200-foot staff. A 
reference to the classification of personnel disclosed a steeple-jack 
among the soldiers and the difficulty was met. 

MOBILIZING THE SKILL OF THE ARMY. 

Down at Camp Sheridan all the water pipes froze and burst and a 
hurry call was sent to Atlanta for plumbers. Only 50 could be found. 
The commander in charge was not familiar with the classification 
system — had passed it on to his subordinates as so much more "paper 
work" for them to do; but when his attention was called to the list, he 
found in 15 minutes 100 experienced plumbers among his own men. 

A company of 250 soldiers needs 28 specially skilled men. It requires 
40 ground men to keep one aviator in the air, and among these ground 
men must ibe rare experts in the art of repairing and adjusting the 
delicate instruments which the flier uses aloft. The system discovered 
that in one company there were six telegraphers and five electricians. 
In one truck drivers' unit there were 13 dentists. Of course, these 
discoveries resulted in immediate transferences and the distribution of 
the men where they were needed. 

The system made it possible, when Pershing called for 200,000 men 
specially skilled in certain branches, to find them and send them 
without delay. 

The system has largely forestalled the errors England and France 
madeat the beginning of the war, when thousands of shipbuilders and 
machinists had to be recalled from the front to man the war industries 
at home. If the American system can only be extended to include an 
analysis of all the industrial skill of the country, the results will be 
as nearly perfect as anything human can be, and both war and war 
industries will be safeguarded against lack of man-power. 

Many interesting things are revealed by the system. Though at 

—52— 



present it deals ©nly with m%n of dr^ft age in thfe Artny^ som© 
interesting conclusions have been established. For ejcark-^ple: there is 
one capaible auto driver to every 22 of the draft and one carbon lamp 
expert to every 425,000 of the draft. There is one capable horse 
handler to every 11 men iji the National Army and one airplane expert 
to every 11,184. There is one auto repairer to every 118 of other 
callings and one physician to every 5,820. There is one machinist to 
every 116 selects and one telephone operator to every 1,853. 

It reveals, too, a greater proportion of skill — that is, more experts 
to the thousand — in the northwestern section of the country of which 
Michigan is a part, than in any other. 

HOW THE SYSTEM REVEALS NATIONAL DEFECTS. 

Other revelations go more deeply into our national life, such as the 
disclosure that one in every 100 is somewhat mentally defective, and 
that on the whole the people are only about 50 per cent efficient. This 
has a bearing on a remark made by a man so high in the Government 
that he may not even be narfted in this connection, to the effect that 
he was not at all surprised, as Lloyd George and Premier Clemenceau 
confessed themselves, at what the United States had done since it 
entered the war; his surprise was that it had not done much more. 

This reference to the nation goes for the race also. Man in his 
highest collective achievement registers only about 50 per cent, plus. 
The human race has yet far to go; human achievement has not even 
begun to approach its zenith. And this war is going to release new 
powers, liberate new waves of energy and point the way to the new 
conditions necessary for humanity's still crescent progress. 

The Army does not discriminate against illiterate men in any line 
that does not require "book learning." If a man has a good working- 
mind, if he can think straight — and there are certain tests to ascertain 
whether he can — he is credited with that ability. There are many 
foreign-born and Southern illiterates, Dr. Scott tells me, who possess 
brilliant minds, though unfortunately handicapped by their lack of 
those media of intellectual exchange, letters and figures. 

Under the psychological tests conducted by the Surgeon-General's 
department, the highest rating a man can win is 414. The records of 
enlisted men reveal that 25 per cent score about 200, while 25 per cent 
score below 200; the remaining 50 per cent scoring between 100 and 200. 

The score of officers is somewhat higher: 25 per cent are above 
325, and 25 per cent below 250; while the remaining 50 per cent are 
between 250 and 325. 

A curious fact with regard to the officers is this: Men highly 
skilled with tools, or highly cultivated in a creative art, do not make 
the best officers. There is a distinct difference between the qualities 
required to work in materials or in purely intellectual principles, and 
those required to work with men. Special culture does not usually 
produce good officer material, while general culture and experience do. 

So, among the many other beginnings to be credited to this war, 
this special one is worth noting — the beginning of a thorough analysis 
of ourselves as a people. 



—53- 



The Chief-of-Staff— Commander of Three MilEon Men 



WASHINGTON, Aug. 10.— The President is Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army and Navy of the United States, but he is a civilian; he 
could not put a squadron of cavalry through its paces, direct the fire of 
a battery of artillery or perform the complex staff duties of an army 
faced by a foe. 

The Secretary of War also is a civilian. He is the President's 
delegated representative in the War Department. While more or less 
conversant with the policies and administrative duties of his depart- 
ment, he is not trained in the technic of armies, he is not expert in the 
art of war. 

And all this is as it should be. It is the peculiar genius of our 
institutions and the guarantee of our liberties that the Civil Establish- 
ment is supreme. Never can we be too intelligently grateful for the 
fact that no swords clank, no spurs jingle, when the President and his 
Cabinet assemble to determine the policies of the nation. 

Yet, if you are to have an army, you must have a soldier as its 
head. He must be an American soldier. He must be the most highly 
trained soldier America can produce. Let a civilian Congress de- 
termine when armies shall be called and for what purpose they shall 
be used; let a civilian President keep command of all the armies that 
may thus be assembled and sent forth; but for the actual work of or- 
ganizing, equipping, training, dispatching and employing the army 
you must have a soldier who can look any great general in the world's 
military forces in the eye, and prove himself an equal. 

The United States has such a soldier. He is Gen. Peyton Conway 
March, Chief of Staff. 

Only three men wear the four silver stars of a full General of the 
United States. One is Pershing, the second is Gen. Bliss, the third 
is Gen. March. You can count on the fingers of your hand the num- 
ber of men who have attained this exalted rank in the history of the 
nation. The first full-fledged general was George Washington. For 
nearly half a century after the Civil War, this high rank was vacant. 
The emergency of war has revived' it. 

THE CHIEF-OF-STAFF IN CONFERENCE. 

I first saw Gen. March, Chief of Staff, at a newspaper men's con- 
ference in the State, War and Navy Building. Gen. March meets the 
Washington correspondents twice a week. They file into a room, 
which is well supplied with special maps, seat themselves and await 
his coming. He enters quickly with an aide and a military stenog- 
rapher, and without preliminary of any sort begins to describe the 
situation on the front. His utterance is rapid and clean cut; the steno- 
graphic report reveals his extempore style to be one of great distinc- 
tion, utterly free of the need for revision. It makes perfect "copy," 
as if it were the carefully builded utterance of a fastidious mind. 

You would almost say, if you did not know him, that a very distin- 
guished scholar had donned the uniform, his utterance breathes so 
unmistakably an atmosphere of cultivation. And yet there is an un- 
dertone of silent driving energy about him that inevitably suggest* 
a man of intense action. 

His account of our military progress in France given, a brief pause 
ensues for questions. Asked where the Michigan and Wisconsin troops 
that trained in Waco are now located, he gave the part of Europe, 

— .5 4 — 



a one-word de-scriptxQfl of the sector, and the commanding general's 
name. 

He announced also that American troops were then appearing in 
Italy — next day the dispatches announced with what outbursts of joy 
the Italian populace had hailed them. Another question or two, then 
abruptly — "Good morning, gentlemen" — and the conference was ended. 

The room in which the conference was conducted was interesting 
chiefly for its maps. They bore in colored strands the outline of the 
military situation as it stood at the end of each of the previous four 
days — a red strand for Wednesday, a blue strand for Thursday, a yel- 
low strand for Friday, and so on. 

There one had visualized for him the battle line as it fell back and 
advanced, the strands crossing each other like a tangled skein of vari- 
colored yarn, but always going on, always going on! The distance be- 
tween Paris and the Germans increased 11 miles! And then 10 miles 
more! And, best of all, the front reduced 10 miles, and then another 
10 miles. The American push had actually reduced the front 20 miles, 
thus freeing all the men in that long stretch of territory for work 
in the heavy part of the onward push. There was a great difference 
in the vividness of that military map and that of the maps currently 
published. _ One could see in just how deep a pocket the German 
Crown Prince had permitted his men to be caught and how that pocket 
was steadily becoming shallower under Allied pressure. 

DISLIKES INTERVIEWS— BUT HE CONSENTED. 

I heard all sorts of opinions as to the approachability of the Chief 
of Staff. Some men told me it was almost worth one's life to ap- 
proach him, that he was a veritable tiger. Others said that he had an 
intense dislike for publicists of every kind, that he despised news- 
paper men, and that if he had his way he would refuse to give the 
public a word about the war. As for interviewing him in any way 
other than the public conference, it would be extremely hazardous if 
indeed it should be possible at all. As a matter of fact the Chief of 
Staff had granted but one interview, and that to a bang-up magazine. 

By good luck and the intercession of an official in the War De- 
partment, the proposal for an interview was put up to Gen. March. It 
was assumed that, if I met him at all, it would of necessity be near 
midnight, for that is his quitting time. But by the best of good for- 
tune an appointment came through for 1:45 p. m. 

And at the precise moment an aide appeared with the compliments 
of the Chief of Staff, asking if I would wait until 2:30. I would have 
been only too glad to have waited until that hour in the morning. 
But exactly on the dot an aide appeared and in the next moment the 
Chief of Staff was extending his hand and pointing to a chair drawn 
up to the desk. 

Usually I am a somewhat curious person. I like to know what my 
surroundings look like. The interior of the office of the Chief of 
Staff, regarded merely as the scenic setting of an interview, was one 
of the points my mind was charged to get. 

But though I was there the larger part of an hour, I am in utter 
ignorance of what the room was like, what military apparatus hung 
there, what portraits if any, what trophies of the field. The eyes and 
person of the Chief of Staff held me like a magnet. It is a somewhat 
humiliating confession for a newspaper v^riter to make, but it may 
throw a sidelight on the subject of this sketch. 

It was evident that the Chief of Staff wasn't being interviewed be- 
cause he wanted to be. It was purely an act of courtesy. Perhaps, 

—55— 



too, he was interested In the individual whose sole purpose was to help» 
the people of his region know their military servants who, until this 
war, have been so generally misunderstood as to their qualities and 
their purposes. 

A WELL-BRED AMERICAN SOLDIER. 

The first discovery I made in that conversation was that I was 
not dealing with a martinet, but with a charming, well-bred gentleman 
who is an American to the core, and whose service to America has that 
same deep-burning source from which the loyalty of all of us springs. 

There he sat, the commander of 3,500,000 men, the head and front 
of the greatest military feat that history records, the man who is 
largely responsible for doing the thing that all the v/orld, friend or 
foe, said could not be done and who is doing it in still greater magni- 
tude every month — and all that marked him, aside from his own 
indomitable personality, were those four small silver stars on each 
shoulder strap. 

I say that I discovered in him the deepest note of Americanism, 
and I must try to show how it revealed itself. There was no outburst 
of love of country, no Fourth of July patriotism of an older time — 
there was no direct word about it at all. 

But there were these things: a belief in the American people, a be- 
lief in Am'erican institutions as now established, a belief in the subor- 
dinacy of the military establishment to the service of the people. In 
sentences that were to me very moving, considering their source, these 
articles of his faith dropped casually into the conversation. 

For one thing the Chief of Staff believes in publicity. "This is the 
people's war," said he, "and they have a right to know everything that 
will not enable the enemy to damage their cause. And it is true that 
very little the people want to know and ought to know possibly could 
afford information to the enemy. 

"We have established the policy of publicity here not only because 
we believe in it, and because our masters, the people, are entitled 
to it, but mostly because they need this knowledge to bring up their 
entire reserve to the support of the war." 

Casualties from the big battle then raging had not been coming 
in, which was interpreted by some to indicate a slump in the policy 
of publicity. "The lists will not be manipulated in any way," said Gen. 
March. "General Pershing has instructions to report the casualties as 
they occur, and as soon as they can be collected." 

HE IS NOT A "MILITARIST." 

For another thing, the Chief of Staff believes in the public attitude 
of_ antagonism toward "militarism." He endorses it. He is against 
militarism himself. 

"The extreme of militarism is as dangerous as the extreme of mili- 
tary helplessness," he said. "It is right that we should fight all ten- 
dencies toward the establishment of a military autocracy in this coun- 
try." — and when he said "fight," he pronounced the word as if he meant 
just that. 

"But," he continued, "there is such a thing as military self-respect, 
the policy of keeping our strength in such a condition of availability as 
to make it impossible for any nation to disregard our national rights. 
The American people themselves will see to it that such a thing never 
happens again. 

"They have had an opportunity to study at first hand, by partici- 
pating in it, the military ideal of the United States. The National 
Army has been the most important event of the last half century — in 

—56— 



a military sense the most important event of our history. Millions of 
young men have tested it for themselves and have approved it. 

"Its influences are going out not only through this generation, but 
will elevate the generations of whom our young soldiers will become 
the fathers — elevate the tone of their loyalty, of their usefulness as 
citizens, and increase their power to bring- the principles of discipline 
into their own lives. 

"Our army is simply democracy in action. Our draft is the most 
just that ever has been devised. There is none like it. It rests on 
the same principle as jury duty. The jury drawn from the body of 
our citizenry is the safeguard of our legal rights, just as this demo- 
cratic army selected by their own will from the body of the people 
safeguards our national rights and secures the future of our country." 

HE KNOWS THE AMERICAN CALIBER. 

The Chief of Staff's eyes, ordinarily very steady and searching, 
glowed with inner feeling as he uttered these words. His admiration 
of the American man is unbounded, and his confidence in the intelli- 
gence, stamina and pluck of the American citizen leads him to the only 
excessive expressions he uses. 

"You see," he said, "I knew the American long before this war. I 
commanded a volunteer battery jn the Philippines, and it was made up 
of every type of American. Some had social position, some had none, 
there were sons of wealth, sons of toil and men who didn't care much 
about either; and I learned then, if I had not known it before, what 
the American can be depended on to do. He is a whole man, wholly 
devoted to the task before him, with a healthy man's desire to do the 
jolb thoroughly and as quickly as possible. There were those who 
expressed doubts as to the ability of the American to fight after so 
many years of peace, and with our natural disinclination for such 
work; but I never doubted for a moment that if fighting were re- 
quired, the American would be found second to none." 

Just how free the Chief of Staff is from professional prejudice or 
intra-army divisive influences is indicated by his plan to unify the 
army, enabling every soldier to wear the insignia "U. S." without sub- 
divisive markings. 

SELECTS AND VOLUNTEERS ALL ONE U. S. ARMY. 

Soldiers, like other classes of men, have their little class prejudices. 
The regular fancies himself to be better than the men of the feder- 
alized National Guard. The National Guard is sure it is superior to the 
men of the National Army — "men who had to be drafted," as the phrase 
goes. 

The Chief of Staff is far above such invidious comparisons. He is 
full of admiration for the National Army. He knows no distinction 
between the volunteer and the man selected by the draft system. 

"The Secretary of War," he says, "has approved our plan"- — it is said 
really to be Gen. March's plan, though you will never catch him saying 
so — "to unify the insignia of the Army, and make every soldier a Sol- 
dier of the United States, without such qualifying marks as "N. A.," 
"N. G.," or "R. C." They are members of the Army of the United 
States in fact. We shall make them so in name also." 

It happened that before I saw the Chief of Staff I had formed a 
theory, based on odds and ends picked up here and there about Wash- 
ington, that the turning point in the great battle then progressing was 
the Americans' refusal to retreat after being driven back. 

I was bold enough to put up my theory to the Chief of Staff, but 

—57— 



he instantly refused to sanction anything that would seem to reflect on 
our Allies. 

Briefly but feelingly he described what they had been standing 
against these four years; there was no possible conceiving their cour- 
age and sacrifice, he said, unless one had seen it. Whatever we had 
been able to do since our arrival was, to be sure, a source of satisfac- 
tion, but to use it as in any way comparing unfavorably our Allies' 
efforts with our own was unjust. Nevertheless, the Chief of Staff did 
not appear to feel at all sad over the account the Americans are giving 
of themselves. 

U. S. ARMY EXCELS IN WILL TO WORK. 

"If our troops have an advantage," he said, "it is in their willing- 
ness to endure the hardest kind of training before they see the battle- 
field. This is not true of all the troops in this war, but it is true of the 
Americans. They — will — train! When I was over there commanding a 
brigade of field artillery, my men were up before daylight, and they 
were hard at work until midnight. There was no let up. Consequently, 
when they came to battle, they were ready." 

And that is a story in itself. As brigadier-general of artillery for 
Pershing, he went across with men who had neither guns nor horses. 
He had some harness, but not enough for a brigade. 

His orders were to have his artillery ready to take action on the 
front when the infantry got ready — and the infantry was fully 
equipped. 

He trained his men with the French guns. He got horses from the 
left-overs of the other armies. He worked day and night and his men 
with him. And when the day came for the infantry to march to the 
front, Brig.-Gen. March's artillery were ready to march with them and 
do the splendid execution that has marked their work to this day. 

You feel something of this driving energy of the man as he speaks. 
Perfectly quiet, his body in absolute control, hardly a movement of a 
hand or limb, you still seem to feel the purring of interior dynamos of 
power. Some men are noisily powerful, like threshing machines and 
locomotives; the Chief of Staff is vibrant, like a dynamo — charged, 
silent, resistless. 

You gather, rightly or wrongly, that Gen. March would not for a 
moment subscribe to the German dictum that it takes years to make 
a soldier. The Kaiser said Germany had the advantage of the world, 
because Germany trained men since the days of Frederick the Great; 
but in our Civil War, the most colossal struggle up to that time, the 
armies were recruited with only a few months of training. 

Training, Gen. March of course, would not underestimate. But he 
would give full appreciation to the qualities which civil life and insti- 
tutions develop in the man who is chosen for training. 

You can train a nation so thoroughly as to drill its initiative out 
of it, make it an army in reserve and not a nation living a free, spon- 
taneous life. One feels that such is not Gen. March's notion of 
training at all. But like all men who have pondered the subject, he 
would approve an acquaintance with arms and the development of a 
system which would annually bring up the physical strength and mili- 
tary dexterity of the nation's manhood to a fairly high degree, and this 
for the physical and moral advantage of the nation, as well as for its 
military value. 

THE WORK OF THE CHIEF-OF-STAFF. 

The work of the soldier in the front line trenches is so important 
that until one gains an insight into the vast complexity of modern 

—58— 



army organization, it seems invidious to compare any work with the 
soldier's. And yet, if the General Staff failed in its work, an army 
would be worse than useless. Any thoughtful person must see how 
vital is the Staff to the life and safety and success of the army. In 
a fundamental sense the word "Staff" means just that: the army leans 
on it for support. 

Besides transport, sustenance and equipment, there are questions of 
disposition of the forces, the placing of reserves, provision against 
contingencies, forestalling of disaster, the co-ordination of all branches 
of the service so that the mightiest stroke can be brought to bear for 
the main object. If this is not done, the army droops, and the enemy 
simply walks through it. 

This is the work of the General Staff. The Chief of Staff and his 
important bureau of chiefs are all charged with these heavy responsi- 
bilities. They are not theorists, they have been under fire. The Chief 
of Staff himself has been many times under fire. As a subordinate 
officer he has fought in the open and in the front line, and several 
times has been given official mention by his then superiors "for dis- 
tinguished gallantry in action." 

He is a fighting soldier. He knows the present war, from the re- 
sponsibilities of the commanding general, to the trench hardships and 
the duties of the private soldier. No matter how many long hours his 
men worked in France, he worked longer. His own work began when 
his work for them and with them was done. 

And he is so thoroughly imbued with the American ideal, he pos- 
sesses so fit a sense of the part his work occupies in our national life 
as a whole, he is so wholesomely aware that he is the servant of our 
civil liberties and he is so unfeignedly the comrade of every American 
soldier that one has no other course than to regard him as the typical 
American in arms. 

I shall always be glad that I met and talked with the Chief of Staff 
of the Army of the United States, Gen. Peyton Conway March. 



—59— 



"The Swivel Chair Army" 



WASHINGTON, Aug. 12. — There is no war romance in Washing- 
ton. The city is not swathed in flags. Save as one sees many Arrny 
men in their olive drab and Naval men in their gleaming white, save as 
one sees an occasional group of Allied colors and hears the continual 
purr of aircraft circling over the city, the impression is one of intense 
and undramatic activity. 

There are no parades, no marching music and few gay social af- 
fairs, as when Army and Navy men congregate in time of peace. The 
entire war organization, like the battleships at sea, is coated in the gray 
paint of action. 

Washington is an extremely sober-minded city these days. One 
would imagine that, with scores of thousands of young women added 
to the city's population and the scores of thousands of troops with 
access to the city, the usual awiount of flirtation yvould go on. But one 
who knows this phenomenon, and who has observed it in many cities, 
is unfeignedly surprised at the absence of it here. My business took 
me ceaselessly about the city by day and night, but I have yet to see 
a soldier try to make friends with a girl on the street and I have j^et to 
see a girl go anywhere but straight about her business. 

The southern girl does not seem to have learned this form of diver- 
sion, and there is something ip. the atmosphere of the Capitol that 
seems to deter others who might be inclined to it. 

Service flags float everywhere and an impressive proportion of them 
bear golden stars. One hardly ever sees a large flag without its gleam 
of gold. 

War has touched even the White House. One day a gassed Ameri- 
can aviator came in, and told in the thin, weak voice of one whose 
lungs had been eaten by poisonous vapor, that he had been with a 
relative of the President's family when he had fallen. He had come to 
give an account of the man's last hours. 

In the House of Represerrtatives they are preparing a House service 
flag, and it, too, will have its touch of gold. Eighty members of the 
House have sons in the service, and the number of the sons exceeds 
100. A member is an active aviator. Another died in training. Three 
Michigan congressmen have given sons — Frank E.Doremus, J. M. C. 
Smith and J. W. Fordney. The Speaker's son, Bennett Champ Clark, 
is in France. 

This afternoon I have just come from the office of John T. Suter, 
the private secretary to the Attorney-General of the United States. 
When I arrived, he was somewhere downtown taking a farewell meal 
with his son. The young man had been ordered overseas. 

THE SWIVEL CHAIR IN WAR. 

You have doubtless heard of the Swivel Chair army. It is a term 
of derision. I wanted to see that army and analyze its composition. 

In tlie beginning it became clear that this war is being managed 
from swivel chairs. The President does his executive work in a chair, 
as do the heads of the Army and Navy. 

If we could see Gen. Pershing and Gen. Foch as they spend most 
of their day, we should not find them astride fiery chargers, but be- 
hind very business-like^desks, in swivel chairs. 

Tlje Chief of Staff and the Provost Marshal General, with their hun- 
dreds of assistants, do their work from swivel chairs. In the Ordnance 

—60— 



Department alone there are 7,500 swivel chairs. The vast detail of the 
war makes it necessary. In the War Risk Insurance Bureau there are 
thousands on thousands of swivel chairs; it is necessary, that the par- 
ents and dependents of soldiers may have their rights attended to. 
So that to serve the country from a swivel chair is not necessarily a 
disgrace. 

The swivel chair army is composed of two arms, civilian and mili- 
tary. I did not think of the first arm when I began my tour. But one 
morning at 9 o'clock it brought itself keenly to my attention. I was 
passing a large building and the clock in the tower was tolling the 
hour, when I heard a great burst of singing. Male and female voices 
blended in the tune of "America." I thought some conrention was 
opening its sessions. The song floated out and filled the street — 

"My Country, 'tis of thee, 

Sweet land of Liberty." 
And then the voices swung from the old anthem to a newer stanza — 

"God save our noble men, 

Bring them safe home again." 

CIVILIAN ARM OF CHAIR ARMY. 

Who were these people? What brought them here? They are, for 
the most part, the sisters, wives and, in some cases, the mothers of 
American soldiers. They are the fathers and incapacitated brothers 
of men in the Army, and the younger brothers awaiting the draft call. 
The majority of them came here glowing with zeal for the Cause. 
For wages that are inadequate, under conditions that are far from com- 
fortable, they came here to help. 

All through these departments you see gray-haired men wearing 
service pins — frequently two stars to which you inwardly do homage. 
In these days of battle they work very tensely, trying to keep their 
minds at their desks. They have come down here to HELP! That 
lame clerk yonder — his brother has gone across; the closest he can get 
to the war and help his brother is through a Government department 
— and he is here! That fellow, pale and intent yonder— his brother 
went down to death in the ocean a month ago. Every little while he 
tries to enlist, but they won't take him; he is doing the best he can for 
his lost brother's Cause. 

I defy any one to stand by and see these people flow into the great 
offices in streams of thousands, and at the stroke of 9 o'clock rise at 
their desks and sing in mighty rhythm: 
"God save our noble men, 
Bring them safe home again; 

God save our men 
Noble and glorious. 
Make them victorious, 
THEY ARE SO DEAR TO US; 
God save our men." 
— I say, I defy any American whose blood is not vinegar, to hear that 
choral in these times of war and from such people — the choral prayer 
of soldiers' kin — without taking off his hat to the Swivel Chair Army. 
You understand now why these girls don't flirt on the streets. The 
service pin bespeaks a plighted heart. You understand why men, who 
have plainly been accustomed to other work, are sitting at under-paid 
desks in the departments. The service pin tells all the tale. 

ON ACTIVE DUTY IN A CHAIR. 

Of the military men of the swivel chair array Uncle Joe Cannon. 
v.<5atd: "They wear -sours to keep their feet from slippiag ©fi the desk" 



Everyone laughed, even those at whom the shaft was aimed. But. it 
was essentially a cruel witticism. It was roughly unjust to thousands 
of officers. 

I asked one spur-wearing officer about it. "I belong to a mounted 
branch of the service and the regulations compel me to wear spurs. 
As for taking them off, I would be glad to be able even to take my 
boots off some nights. Last night I slept in the corner there. I was 
called into conference at 12:30 in the night, finished my work at 4, and 
it wasn't worth while to go home." 

I asked the head of the department about it. "They wear spurs to- 
day because they will be using them tomorrow," he said. Then he 
added, "and worse luck for me; I need them here, but thej^'re crazy to 
go." 

Now, I could fill the rest of this article with instances that would 
be very depressing, considered alone. I could tell of a Senator's son 
who is always kept in safe service — a Republican Senator's son who 
would be known to Michigan readers were his name given here. I 
could tell of certain scions of wealth — a very few, of course, but still 
they could be so set forth as to make it seem that the condition was 
general — who have been kept in bomb-proof jobs. 

I could tell of young men with "pull" who have donned the uniform 
and are working hard, but are in no immediate danger. And I do not 
desire the reader to understand that such conditions do not exist. 

But are they representative? that is the question. 

If I were writing about the newspaper correspondents in Wash- 
ington, I could tell of several scandalous instances of slacking, and 
of the worst kind — slacking in the uniform. 

But when I look at the great service flag in the National Press 
Club with its three golden stars and 102 blue stars; when I listen to 
members who have returned gassed and wounded; when I hear of the 
hard service and exploits of others overseas — what am I to write about? 
Overshadow the story with the disgrace of the self-seeking few, or 
glorify it with the chronicles of the courageous many? In a camp it 
isn't the few faint hearts who make the . story, but the multitude of 
strong hearts. 

SWIVEL CHAIR SLACKERS IN MINORITY. 

So, while there are some in the militarj^ arm of the swivel chair 
army who deserve contempt, whose parents and friends have used 
"pull" to get them a place, the shame of which they will never be 
able to shake off, it is only just to emphasize two things: First, they 
are fewer than they were a few months agO' — they are being cleaned 
out; second, they were never more than a contemptible minority. The 
injustice of Mr. Cannon's remark was that in castigating those who 
deserved it, the blow fell with unfair sting on the blameless. 

I met an aviator who commanded 154 men in Texas. He is now in a 
swivel chair at Washington. When the order came to go to a desk, 
he was the most disconsolate of men. He wanted to go to France 
and fight the enemy in the air; that was why he entered the Army, 
that was his highest desire. To go to Washington was the collapse of 
all his dreams. 

But what had happened? This young aviator with his 154 men had 
developed a morale, had worked out such a perfect system of keeping 
the soldier's mind and body at its best, that Washington took note 
and investigated. What the General Staff considered with this: "If 
this officer can do that for 154 men, why can't he do it for 3,000,000 
men? Why not order him to make his system general through the 
Army?" The officer had no pull — indeed, in the majority of cases men 

— 62 — 



are brought here purely on their record — but his work spoke for itself. 

This man, now in a swivel chair, would rather be in France flying 
for America. On his desk is a tiny motto — perhaps it gives the clue; 
it is a paraphrase of Omar: "Ah, take the Work, and let the Credit 
Go." 
PLEADING TO GO TO THE FRONT. 

This I know, that hundreds of reserve officers took the order to 
Washington with good grace because they fancied that here they 
would be nearer the center of things and could put in a word that 
would get them sooner to France. 

And this I know, that these requests mount to such proportions 
the Secretary of War is compelled to set aside a time to hear them, 
and when he does there is a great line-up of young officers waiting to 
prefer their pleas. Their faces, when they come out, refused, are not 
pleasant to see. 

And this also I know, there are officers kept in departments by the 
promise that as soon as they get their sections in such perfect work- 
ing order that thej' can be relieved, they will be given their desire for 
overseas service — and maybe such a promise doesn't make for speed 
and efficiency! 

But there is another thing I know — some officers will never see 
France; their ability in their present tasks is so high that they could 
be replaced with the utmost difficulty and confusion. 

These are the men for whom I would have true Americans think 
that they, too, are on active service, even though they work in a swivel 
chair. 

I heard a Bureau Chief criticized because he was not training up an 
understudy to take his place if anything happened. There are going 
to be many physical breakdowns in Washington, ^nd preparedness 
is desirable. 

"But I can't find anyone willing to come," said this Bureau Chief in 
worried tones. "I approach a likely young officer and propose that he 
come with me, and he shies off — begs me not to get him tied up — 
he is laying his lines for France. I don't like to ask for an order yank- 
ing him in here willy nilly — I know how he feels. Take 30 years off 
me and I would be for getting over myself — as a private, if necessary." 

Doubtless there are men who came here for Government service to 
evade the draft, or, failing that, to evade dangerous service. Some are 
indispensable; others could be superseded by civilians above draft age 
or incompetent for military service. But Washington does not offer 
itself as a refuge of the slacker. Washington despises him. One day 
in a certain department I heard an application made for a position. 
The applicant was a lawyer. He wanted to serve where his training 
would be of use. The first question was: - 

"Is he in the draft?" 

It appeared that he was beyond draft age, but within military age. 

"Why doesn't he enlist?" 

The question was neither a sneer nor a rebuff. It was a request for 
information. What prevented him from enlisting? — that was its mean- 
ing. Was he physically unfit? Did his financial resources and family 
responsibilities make it impossible? Or was he a really able legal mind 
who would be more useful in Washington or working for the Gov- 
ernment elsewhere than he would be in uniform? 

That is a gauntlet run by men who apply for positions. The ten- 
dency is more and more toward selecting men for ordinary positions 
who could not be used to better advantage elsewhere. And this is what 
exactly suits the right-minded young fellow who is able and desirous 
of getting to the war front. 

"They wear spurs today because they will be using them to- 
morrow." 

—63— 



j.-Gen. Gorgas Wages War of Extermination 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13.— The United States Army contains^ at 
least one general who believes in wars of aggression, wars of invasion 
and wars of extermination. 

War is his business. When there isn't a good war going, he makes 
one. He never treats with his enemy. He destroys him root and 
branch, leaving no trace. There are spots on the earth's surface which 
he has swept bare of foes that literally swarmed there; they have been 
exterminated without mercy. 

And a noble old warrior he is. A well-poised head with an eagle- 
like nose, a dignified gray mustache, a colorful complexion wholesomely 
tanned, his tunic straightly butttoned, his military boots encasing legs 
thrust wide apart, and the twin stars of a major-general on his epaulets, 
would make him a notable figure even if you did not know his identity 
and history. Seen closely, he is found to have a mild and twinkling 
eye, and his tone is one of kindliness which modulates his notes of 
power. 

I am writing of William C. Gorgas, surgeon-general of the Army. 
He is physician-extraordinary to your boy, if he is in the army. His 
practice is among men whose occupation is supposed to be the most 
arduous and dangerous in the world, and yet the health rate of his 
patients is the highest in the world. He has cut the death rate of war 
more than one-half, and still is lowering it. And he is doing more for 
your boy's physical welfare than ever could have been done in civil life. 

When the European war began Gen. Gorgas was conducting a war 
of his own over in Africa. He was fighting yellow fever. He is an 
undefeated soldier in that sort of warfare. He exterminated the enemy 
in Havana and in Panama. For centuries yellow fever had held the 
fort against men and governments and had defeated vast enterprises 
at the cost of thousands of human lives. But Gen. Gorgas virtually 
has rid the world of it. There exists only one breeding place of that 
plague now, and Gen. Gorgas hopes to defeat it there when the war in 
France is over. 

A REAL WORLD CONQUEROR. 

Here, then, is a bona fide world-conqueror, if you would see one. 
Alexander, Napoleon and Wilhelm II all have failed, but Gen. Gorgas 
has succeeded. And he has succeeded because he sought human good 
and no one's harm. His monument is a world swept clean of deadly 
fever. 

Gen. Gorgas is found in one of those board and plaster barracks 
that have sprung up in entire blocks through Washington. In his 
office is his desk and chair and a couple of folding chairs for those 
having business with him. Around him, covering almost an entire city 
block, is his office organization, and if you should walk through these 
corridors and rooms you would come, sooner or later upon all the 
famous medical men America has produced, or at least those of them 
who are not at the front. An office list would equal a "Who's Who" of 
the greatest American medical scientists of the age — so general has 
been the volunteering amongst the profession. 

The question of doctors for the Army is a most vital one. There 
are enough for the armies recently assembled, but greatly increased 
medical enlistments will be necessary for the armies yet to be trained. 
On July 12 there were 21,370 officers of the Medical Reserve Corps — 

— 64 — 



evefy one of whom is a civilian physician who has enlisted — and that 
number represented one-fourth of the available physicians of the United 
States, omitting from the calculation, of course, those who are unfit 
physically or temperamentally. 

This means that the nation is arriving at a point where the medical 
needs of civil communities will have to ibe considered. Already it has 
occurred that the enlistment of physicians has left some communities 
without sufficient medical service, and some men have been sent back 
to serve the civilian population. The safe ratio of physicians to popu- 
lation, as fixed by the American Medical Association, is one to every 
700. In the Army, one physician is required for every 100 soldiers. 

That is to say, if we raise a military force of 5,000,000 men, it will 
require 50,000 doctors. As there are only 145,000 physicians and 
surgeons in the United States, and as only about 75,000 of these are 
within military age — that is, 55 years old or less — the situation is 
easily visualized. To add to its gravity there is the fact that fewer 
young men are now training in medicine than was formerly the case. 
The cry of "too many doctors" came just in time to discourage young 
men from attempting the medical career at a moment when more 
doctors were becoming essential. The authorities do not desire to 
deprive hospitals and communities of medical attendants, and many 
internes who have offered themselves for the war have been commis- 
sioned and placed on inactive duty in their home hospitals. 

AN ARMY THAT BATTLES PAIN. 

It is really no misuse of the term "sacrifice" to so describe the 
enlistment of young doctors. There are physicians and medical 
scientists of note who have relinquished $100,000 incomes to take the 
bare living wage of majors and colonels, and their act is spoken of 
as sacrifice, which indeed it is. 

But it is the young physician, who is just pulling through his first 
struggle for a foothold and for the first time is earning $3,000 or $5,000 
a year, who makes a really poignant sacrifice when he offers himself 
to his country. And the surgeon who is neither young nor famous, 
but in another 10 years would have achieved a substantial place in his 
profession, he, too, is making a heavy sacrifice. The medical corps 
knows this; the people seldom do. 

The army of healing which Gen. Gorgas commands has had a 
remarkable growth. Its enlisted personnel on the first anniversary of 
the declaration of war was larger by 20,000 than the entire regular 
United States Army the year before. In April, 1917, there were 5,000 
beds in Army hospitals; in June there were 100,000. That is in this 
country alone. Overseas there are more than 250,000 beds. And the 
erection of hospitals, here and overseas, is constantly being pushed 
forward. In April, 1917, there were seven Army hospitals; in June, 
1918, there were 100. In April, 1917, there were 900 officers and 6,500 
enlisted men in the medical department; today there are 24,000 officers 
and 160,000 enlisted men. In April, 1917, there were 375 women nurses 
for the Army; today there are 14,527. 

The reader should know that women nurses do not go on the 
battlefield. They look very pretty and engaging in the posters 
which portray them walking among the wounded in No Man's 
Land — but it isn't done. Nor are the women at the front Amer- 
ican Red Cross nurses, although they wear the Red Cross, which' 

is the symbol of the medical corps of ,=>'' \';™",-',''^^Experiment's 
—65— 



or six miles back of the firing line, and if successful it may lead to 
their larger employment in those zones. But, as yet, the women 
remain in comparative safety so far as real battle danger is concerned. 
Of course, the bombing raids which the enemy visits on hospitals are 
always a very genuine danger. 

Beside these increases, there are 150 laboratories at work on the 
medical problems of the Army, two Medical Officers' Training Schools, 
are in operation, and in July 16,420 student officers were taking the 
training. 

When asked what, in his opinion, was the most striking difference 
between this war and previous wars. Gen. Gorgas answered: "The 
decreased rate of death from wounds and disease, and the dispatch 
with which wounded men are returned to active duty." 

Through the efforts of the medical department, 80 per cent of 
American wounded are returned to the front in a month. 

The record of almost any regiment engaged in the Civil War will 
show more men as having died of disease than of wounds. The 
Spanish-American War, which wasn't much of a war in a military 
sense, cost a higher percentage of American lives by disease than the 
Japanese lost by disease and bullets combined 'in their war with Russia. 

Typhoid, tetanus, gangrene were the most powerful and dangerous 
enemies the soldier had to meet. 

All that is happily changed. The Army has absolutely abolished 
typhoid. Tetanus no longer is a terror. And one of the most notable 
advances in modern medical science is the control of gas gangrene by 
Dr. Bull, of the Rockefeller Institute. Dr. William H. Welch, who 
discovered the gas bacillus, was associated with Pasteur, Lister, 
Virchow and Charcot in his younger days, has been at the top of his 
profession and in enjoyment of a princely income for many years. 
You will find him now in a board and plaster barracks, devoting the 
flower of his knowledge to the youth of the country. His title is that 
of colonel, at its almost nominal salary. 

THE ARMY IS KILLING THE SOCIAL EVIL. 

There is another side to the health of the Army, a side which the 
war is compelling us to cease being squeamish about. 

Prudishness in the use of words refers to it as the "social evil." 
Kipling's line about "single men in barracks" not growing into plaster 
saints has cast a sinister light on the whole matter and has misrepre- 
sented the fact, at least as it is today. Because the Army makes and 
publishes reports of diseases^ incident to vice, many people jump to 
the conclusion that vice is rife in the Army, whereas if they would only 
read the reports they would see that it is really morality that is 
prevalent. Army officers will tell you that they are not trying to 
control the soldier's morals, but one doesn't need half an eye to see 
that the Army discipline invades the physical life to such a large and 
determining extent as to affect the moral life. 

The "social evil" is, historically, a war-born disease. It was brought 
into Europe and spread by the Crusaders. It has been the curse of 
every war since that time. 

"But," said an officer of the medical department, "this disease born 
of war is going to be killed by war. If this war lasts long enough, 
venereal disease will be exterminated in the world. We have made 
»such progress in this direction that it, is no uncommon thing to hear 
officers say: T would rather have my daughter marry a discharged 
American soldier than any type of man I know.' " 

It isn't difficult to see how this is working. Take the health reports 

—66— 



of any cantonment when a new batch of civilians is received, and 
compare the records of the same men six months later. The figures 
have only one meaning, and that meaning is in the highest favor of 
the decency of the men. At the inception of the National Army the 
United States Government, through the Public Health Service, the 
United States Army Medical Department, state boards of health and 
the Commission on Training Camp Activities, began a physical and 
moral clean-up in all cities and towns in the vicinity of training camps. 
Not only did they care for health inside the camp, but outside, too. 
Sitting here in Washington, I turn to the weekly report and can tell 
just how many cases of every communicaible disease existed last week 
in the Camp Custer zone in Michigan. And we who had the privilege 
of knowing the daily life of the camp for months on end, can testify 
how thorough the clean-up was, and how next to impossible it was for 
immoral persons to live in that entire zone. The Government considers 
all lewd persons as potential enemies. 

THE MOBILIZATION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. 

It is therefore with justifiable pride that Gen. Gorgas, the conqueror 
of yellow fever, observes the extent to which his system is slowly 
killing out the venereal peril also. Through a long course of years, 
with the enlisted personnel of the Army constantly increasing, he can 
see this peril constantly decreasing, until now it is in a rapid decline. 

It is one of the most noteworthy facts which can be stated that, 
though the health, rate in all particulars is much higher in the canton- 
ments of this country than among the civilian population, the health 
rate of the American Expeditionary Force overseas is still higher than 
that of the cantonments. The more perfect the military control, the 
higher the moral and physical condition of the^soldier. 

And, of course, alcoholism also is virtually abolished. 

There is ample testimony in Washington and elsewhere to show 
that to the mothers, sisters, wives and sweethearts of the soldiers and 
sailors, these are among the most grateful facts that could be given 
them. Women-folk fear more for their men-folks' souls than for their 
bodies; they fear the enemies of character, the shafts of devastating- 
sin more than they fear the German guns. To assure them of the 
cleanliness of the men of the armies is to soothe their deepest unrest. 

One of the quietest, one of the least outwardly compelling of all the 
Government departments, this Army Medical Department is one of the 
most noble and important. The great specialists of the eye, the nerves, 
the bones and the cars; the great specialists in nutrition, psychology; 
in surgery, sanitation, social hygiene; the great internists and 
chemists; the great orthopedic specialists and facial reconstructionists; 
the great bacteriologists and diagnosticians; the great pathologists and 
Roentgenologists and actinographers — the knights errant of healing, 
the angels whose touch stills pain — these, all these, in a host too 
great to catalog, have gathered to repair the ravage.'; of the eagles of 
war. And they work with pride and confidence under the captaincy of 
that great modern conqueror, Surgeon-General Gorgas. 



— £7- 



How Military Morale Is Maintained 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14.— "War," said Napoleon, "Is three parts 
morale and one part materiel." 

Anyone who has lived for any length of time in a National Army 
training camp and has witnessed the almost miraculous transformation 
wrought in young men whom we had been accustomed to think of as 
very ordinary fellows will realize in part what Napoleon meant. 

We had morale before we had material. Not alone because, as 
someone has said, "Autocracy has an army, but Democracy is an 
army," but because there is something in American society and the 
American spirit that tends constantly to keep up the national morale. 
Ever since September, 1917, I have been trying to deiine what that 
impetus and stimulus is, but it evades my analysis. Endeavoring to 
avoid the pitfall of nationalistic egoism, one hesitates to say that the 
American soldier is braver, more intelligent and has a greater power 
of initiative than any other troops in the world, though possibly that 
is true. He possesses a peculiarly American combination of qualities, 
a more instant power of summoning spiritual reserves, a certain dash 
balanced by prudence, a rare courage directed by purpose, an inclusive 
vision of what it is all about — perhaps these are some of the elements 
that go to make distinctive our American morale. 

No one who knew the troops in the training camps is at all sur- 
prised at what the Americans did in the last drive, when they turned 
the German advance into a defensive action and retreat. It simply 
was not in the Americans, with even the ghost of a chance to do any- 
thing, to do anything else. It is the peculiarly undefinable American 
spirit. 

The change from civil life to military life is a sudden and drastic 
one for millions of young men. Is it possible to carry over the nerve, 
the "pep" of the free life of the civilian to the disciplined life of the 
soldier? 

There is one group of men, working under the direction of the Gen- 
eral Staff, who say that it is, and have proved it. This group is called 
the Committee on Military Morale. It is one of the most interesting 
sections of the General Staff's activities that I have met in Washington. 
It deals with human qualities all through. To it the soldier is not 
merely a military automaton; he is a flesh-and-blood man, with 
thoughts and feelings and moods. It realizes that a man fights as he 
thinks; his body merely obeys his mind. One enthusiastic soldier is 
worth 10 who are merely dutiful. 

INFLUENCES THAT DEPRESS MORALE. 

One part of the work of the supervisors of military morale is to 
combat the influences which tend to depress the soldier. It comes with 
somewhat of a shock to learn just what are these influences and how 
potent, whether deliberately or innocently used. 

The deliberate use of depressing influeaces is specially damnable — 
tfcat is the only adequate word for it — not only because of their power 
!to lower the soldier's morale, but the cruelty of the means they 
employ. 

It is surprising a^nd enraging to learn to what extent the suspicion 
tjhat their wives are unfaithful to them is disseminated among soldiers. 
These rumors always are run down, but it is not always possible to find 
their sources; in the vast majority of cases it is, of course^ easily proved 
■fehat -they ar« felse, 

~«8_ 



The Army lists another common cause of depression in the lack 
of n:ev/s from home. A soldier who gets letters regularly is in far 
better case than one who does not. That is why every effort is made 
to give the soldier the best mail service possible; every mail bears a 
mighty wave of stimulus with it, providing, of course, that the letters 
are the right kind, which the majority of them are. 

The character of the news sent from home affects the Army pro- 
foundly. A letter telling how sick the family cow was and how badly 
father suffered from his rheumatiz, and describing all the sorrows of 
the neighborhood or breathing the heavy air of loneliness because of 
the absence of the son who is a soldier — why, if a psychological ther- 
mometer could be hung in the vicinity while that letter was being 
read, the temperature of the soldier's morale would be found to have 
dropped 50 degrees. 
THE VALUE OF A GOOD HOME LETTER. 

A letter is either a powerful weapon to be put into a soldier's 
hand to make him fight, or into his heart to make him droop. 

Now, much of this has been said over and over in a perfunctory 
way, but there is one consideration that ought to make it of the most 
vital importance, namely that the soldier's chances of surviving a battle 
are doubled and trebled if he goes in with a high heart. Cheerful let- 
ters are actual life-savers. Let a boy receive a glum letter that dis- 
heartens him, then let the order come to go "over the top" and he is at 
a disadvantage. His safety depends on his freedom of mind to utilize 
the training he has had in attack and defense. Render him morose 
or sad or foreboding, so that he flags mentally, and his danger is en- 
hanced. This is not mere gratuitous advice handed out by men guess- 
ing at it; it is the fact gleaned from wide experience. 

Just before the terrible Italian defeat with its attendant slaughter, 
the Italian army had been honeycombed by mysteriously circulated 
reports, each bearing enough circumstantial trimming to make it 
plausible, that soldiers' wives were faithless. This, combined with 
other rumors whose purpose was the same, overthrew the spirit of the 
Italians. 

The return of the Italian armies to their former high morale is not 
the result of military measures alone, but of the minute and extended 
investigation of thousands of individual rumors which were proved 
to be untrue, and a subsequent careful attention to all matters affecting 
morale. 

The Military Morale section works in conjunction with every avail- 
able civilian agency to assist in making more effective the work of all 
the great forces for better morale, such as the Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, 
K. of C, etc., by seeing that they are given all possible opportunities 
to serve. It sometimes happens that a soldier is depressed be- 
cause there is need or suffering at home. Through the co-operation of 
civilian agencies on the spot, the need is supplied, the suffering is as- 
suaged, and the good v/ord is sent to the soldier concerned. Everything 
must be right in the soldier's life or he can not be the best soldier. 
STUDYING THE MORALE OF THE CAMP. 

Sometimes the influence that depresses morale is in the camp it- 
self. A company, for example, shows a high percentage of disciplinary 
actions. Now, it may ordinarily be assumed that its members arc 
no worse than those of other companies in the camp; so, the reason 
for their apparently worse conduct is investigated. Is it a slovenly 
company cook? An irascible captain? A devil-may-care leader who is 
always enticing the men into difficulties? An unnecessarily difficult 
camping place? or what? 

—69— 



The Morale Officer of the division investigates and, if the source 
of the trouble is removable, he removes it. Sometimes a word in the 
ear of a superior officer, who transmits that word to the subordinate 
commander is sufficient. The General Staff is interested in doing 
everything possible to remove causes of depression or unhappiness. 
Not that the soldier is coddled. "War is war, and the- Army is the 
Army." But he is given a square deal all round. 

The need for morale work reaches overseas, of course. There are 
here and there in the American Army in the United States men who 
are apparently loyal soldiers who, when they reach France, attempt to 
use ah insidious form of influence on their fellows. One of the com- 
mon forms of it is this:. The American is told that, if captured by the 
Germans, he will not be turned into a prison camp, but will be used 
by the German government in its plan to increase the German popu- 
lation. He is told that the German government prefers Americans for 
this work, as they regard the mixture of German and American blood 
as being very desirable and hope thus to rehabilitate the ravages of 
war which the population has suffered. Of course, this and similar 
atternpts to disintegrate American morale are not successful, but they 
have been found and inust be met. 

THE MORAL TAINT IN ENEMY PROPAGANDA. 

It is not a pleasant subject, but it is better frankly to expose it 
than to permit it the semi-concealed existence it has in the sub- 
terranean channels of public gossip, that much of the deleterious propa- 
ganda of this war has to do with immorality. 

The country is honeycombed with rumors of the misbehavior of 
Red Cross nurses, people saying that they actually know of a large 
number on board a ship being sent back to America because their in- 
discretions unfitted them for further work. This is a lie of blackest 
infamy, but you would be astounded to know how widely it is circu- 
lated and, unfortunately, how often believed. 

Why do people circulate and believe such stories? Outside the 
known purpose of active alien enemies in propagating these rumors, 
why do the mass of the people keep them going? It is a psycholog- 
ical situation which every experienced newspaper man can appre- 
ciate. People naturally believe that there -is always an "inside story" 
which the general public does not know. If they can hear something 
that has not appeared in the press, like the "suppressed story" of the 
sinking of a troop-ship or the "secret" shooting of spies and desert- 
ers at a training camp, they imagine they have happened on something 
special and privileged. Their next step almost invariably is to make 
themselves of momentary note by circulating the news to their friends; 
and each friend in turn also becomes important to himself as the 
depository of confidential information, and he claims his share of the 
glory by telling it too. It is simply human nature over again. It 
has been actually tested by setting completely harmless rumors adrift 
in a camp and measuring the time it takes for 1,000 men to learn of 
them. 

The morale of the nation thus is in the keeping of every citizen. 
■ Each loyal man and woman should make his or her ears a terminal 
where the Rumor stops forever as far as he or she is concerned, and 
if possible discover and report the source. 

THE FOREIGN-BORN AMERICAN. 

The Morale section also has taken hold of the problem of the for- 
eign-language soldier in the training camps. In numerous instances 
his lot has not been a happv one. Because the study of English was 

—70— 



for many months optional with him — though many thousands studied 
and became fairly proficient in our language — he held his unit back; 
and he was usually given less desirable work to do because he was 
fit for nothing else. 

Naturally, his morale went down to zero under such conditions. 
When the 82nd Division left Camp Gordon it had to slough off 2,000 
foreign-speaking soldiers, and they were left apparently to undergo 
the same experience with the next division that trained there. 

But in the meantime the Military Morale section got to work. It 
managed to have these foreign-born men reorganized into companies 
composed of their own racial brothers. It set over them officers who 
could speak their language. It made the study of English part of the 
day's work. And in a few weeks 85 per cent of those companies were 
in a high state of enthusiasm, and when reviewed by the commanding 
general they were pronounced fit comrades for American troops. 
Their ability had been drawn out of them; they began to feel that 
they "belonged;" they began to yell to go to France. 

It is sometimes said that soldiers fight best when their homes are 
invaded. It sounds well, but there would seem to be some doubt of 
it. It may be that under such conditions soldiers fight more desperate- 
ly, but desperate fighting is not always the best. If this were the 
prime stimulant to fighting, of course the American troops haven't 
got it. It would seem that troops fight best when they know why 
they are fighting and the significance of defeat or victory to their 
cause, and when their minds are freest from anxiety about their 
homes. 
U. S. SOLDIERS KNOW WHY THEY FIGHT. 

Thus every facility is given the American soldier to study for him- 
self the reasons why we are at war. The best historians and the 
greatest statesmen have laid their reasons on the table for him to 
weigh. He is not told what to think. No psychological offensive is 
conducted to invade and destroy the stronghold of his mind. No sup- 
pressive measures are brought to bear on his opinion. But he is equip- 
ped with the facts and the issues of the world war. 

And the result is that we have armies who not only can beat the 
enemy in battle, but could also beat him in an historical or political 
argument if that were necessary. Many a Fritz has come trembling 
into an American encampment to find his captors turning their in- 
tellectual guns on him. After he has been rendered hannless by_ cap- 
ture they would rather convert than kill him. That is typically 
American. 

An important feature of the work is done amongst pre-draft men. 
To some temperaments the weeks of waiting between the registration 
and the call are peculiarly trying. Some young fellows view it as 
their "last weeks of freedom" and proceed to have a high old time. 
Others are fearful of what they imagine to be the hardships of a 
soldier's life. The Provost Marshal General is instituting boards of 
instruction in the various communities to help the pre-draft man pre- 
pare for his new life, instead of progressively unfitting himself for it 
by riotous living. Lectures, motion pictures and other means are to 
be used to give the anxious boys an idea of just what the soldier's life 
is. 

Everything is so human about this Military Morale work— even to 
the looking up of information for anxious friends, the letters written 
by appropriate local leaders to boys who have distinguished them- 
selves, the arranging for a representative official of the community to 
call on parents who have been bereaved — everything is so human and 
so wise and so considerate, that it is a pleasure to chronicle it as 
part of the work of the General Staff for the soldiers and civilians of 
the country. — '71 — 



An Interview With the Secretary of the Navy 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15.— He reminds you of an elderly, virile 
family physician who is as well skilled in human nature as in his 
profession. A quiet voice commanding apt words; eyes wholly honest 
but by no means unsophisticated; a manner of quiet friendliness— it 
would be quite possible, without a second and more appraising glance, 
to be fooled in the man — to be fooled, that is, iby imagining thatjie 
would be an easy man to fool. Converse with him a little and you 
will see many signs that he is not quite the man to come that trick 
upon. 

Josephus Daniels has been one of the most ridiculed men in Amer- 
ica. And that seems very strange when you meet him, for there is 
nothing about him upon which to hang ridicule. One suspects that 
the ridiculousness of the situation must have inhered in the point of 
view of his decriers; it must have inhered in a state of mind utterly 
unsympathetic with certain wholly unassailable ideals which this 
Secretary of the Navy holds. 

Still, on meeting him, there seems nothing whatever strange in the 
fact that he survived the ridicule — survived it, not as many do, with 
scars to testify to their ordeal; but survived it without a scratch. 

For something like a year, Josephus Daniels served as stock 
material for one of the best-known humorous weeklies in America. 
His Christian name itself was turned into material for sport, much of 
it unkind. And one of the most regular and most tickled readers of 
that weekly through its long campaign of refined ridicule was Mr. 
Daniels himself. He rather enjoyed the fencing skill of his witty 
antagonist. 

Secretary Daniels has done many things, but there is one thing he 
has never done; and if ever he should begin to do it, you may set it 
down that a great change has come over the man: — he has never 
made spoken or written defense in reply to any criticism of himself. 
He doesn't believe in it. 

Being a newspaper man of experience, he has been in. some hard 
fights and given as good blows as he received; he has defended 
persons and causes with a fighter's zeal; but he early learned that if 
the thing you are trying to do does not speak for itself, nothing that 
you can say will make the least difference. 

THE SECRETARY'S PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Down in his state of North Carolina, there was a governor whose 
elections Mr. Daniels, as newspaper editor, had helped to win, and 
the time came when the governor's policies stirred up consideraible 
popular criticism. Not being accustomed to public life, the governor 
was stung very sharply by the public prod; indeed, he was stung to 
reply. So he wrote out a defense of himself and his policies. Secretary 
Daniels says it was a most beautiful, true and adequate defense. And 
he brought it to Editor Daniels for publication. 

"No," said he, "I'll not print it." 

"Why?" asked the astonished governor. 

"Because I'm your friend," quoth Editor Daniels. 

"But if you were my friend, you would print my defense," the 
governor asserted. 

"No, that is not the case at all," said the editor. "Now, look here a 
moinent. This is a good defense. You have done an excellent piece 



of work in it. If you don't want to burn it, lay it safely away some- 
where. But don't print it. There is nothing you can write or say that 
your opponents cannot answer tomorrow. And then you'll have to 
defend yourself some more. And before you know it, the big thing 
will be the squabble and not these perfectly sound policies you are 
trying to establish. If you ibelieve that what you are doing is right, 
go ahead with it. Your work will speak for you when the time comes." 

That is the policy which Secretary Daniels himself follows. 

The office he now holds is his first political office. He was a good 
enough newspaper man to believe that he ought not to entangle himself 
with outside obligations. He v/ouldn't even accept a membership on 
a local board. The only exception in his career was more than 20 
years ago, when hard times struck the weekly newspaper he was 
running and he could not make a living with it. He obtained a chief 
clerkship in the Interior Department at Washington and edited his 
paper in his leisure hours. 

When President Wilson offered him the post of Secretary of the 
Navy, he accepted it as a duty. And right there his troubles began. 
He became the butt of every jokester in America. The reasons 
therefor are rather interesting. 

Back in Carolina, Josephus Daniels had been an Idealist— a practical 
idealist. (It is curious how often one must use that term in describing 
the higher lights of the present Administration.) Worse than being 
an Idealist, he was a Moralist. He ibelieved that right was right and 
wrong was wrong. He was always using his paper to clean _ up 
something — liquor, the traffic In scarlet women, gambling, political 
crookedness — always something that he knew to be wrong. 

He says he was fighting his own party most of the time, for in 
those days these public evils in his state happened to bask in the 
approving protection of Democratic politicians. They thought he 
was a crank on such things — a Sunday school enthusiast — not a red- 
blooded man of the world. 

A DANIELS COME TO JUDGMENT. 

The change to Washington worked no change in his ideas. He 
came to the Navy with new eyes, and he saw some things that, 
according to his Carolinian newspaper standards, were utterly wrong. 
For example: he had to pass on court-martial cases of sailors who 
had been convicted of smuggling a bottle of beer aboard ship, and 
yet he knew that sometimes those very sailors were required to serve 
champagne aboard ship to their officers! It did not seem square. In 
a matter of personal privilege involving food and drink it did not seem 
American that the enlisted men should be prohibited by Navy 
regulations from privileges which officers enjoyed without question. 
In questions of food and drink, mind you — not in such affairs as might 
justly be the subjects of distinction between officers and men. 

So Secretary Daniels looked into the entire affair. He told me that 
he was surprised at the tendency to social autocracy which he found 
among certain sets of officers — never among the best officers, never 
among those who held the interests of the Navy closest their hearts, 
but only among "sets." 

It seemed to him a logical conclusion that if liquor were bad for 
the enlisted men, the same principle should apply to the officers. But 
the "if" as to the badness of liquor did not exist in Josephus Daniels' 
mind; he had long been booze's enemy. So he did what to him was 
a perfectly sane and natural thing to do: he ordered liquor oflf all 
ships of the United States Navy. 

—73— 



Then the howl broke loose. Most of us remember it. A rural 
Moralist in Washington was running amuck with the sacred traditions 
of the Navy! Mr. Bryan's grape-juice sprees were innocent in 
comparison. 

This shrewd, kindly-eyed man in the big building across from the 
White House knew what caused the initial storm. Officers themselves 
did not dare spcak^but the "social sets" ashore, the weathy do-nothings 
of the principal ports whose social seasons were adorned by champagne 
suppers aboard American battleships in return for courtesies accorded 
the officers ashore — these were the first squealers. 

The Secretary's order, being a black eye officially delivered upon the 
countenance of the liquor business, which even then was beginning 
to feel the first cold breeze of public disapproval and which resented 
any act that further damaged its reputation, the liquor business, too, 
struck back — and usually it struck through political channels. At any 
rate, there was a merry storm and, in the absence of good argument, 
ridicule was the favorite weapon used. 

The upshot is well known. Secretary Daniels' order stood. The 
Navy remained boozeless. And now the Army is boozeless, too, by 
Government order. "He laughs best who laughs last," but Secretary 
Daniels doesn't laugh. He is too busy. 

AN ENEMY OF CASTE IN NAVY. 

Secretary Daniels had other "notions" the wisdom of which has 
been confirmed by the war. It w^as his belief that the enlisted man in 
the Navy ought to have a chance, so he opened Annapolis to enlisted 
men who should prove their fitness. To help them attain this fitness 
he established an educational systein throughout the war fleets of the 
United States. 

He wanted the enlisted men to feel that the Navy offered them a 
career in which every marit they achieved would be recognized. He 
utterly abolished caste in the Navy — the old rule of "once a sailor, 
never anything higher." 

The result was that when war came it found the Navy on tip-toe, 
filled with zealous young men. The stifling system of caste had been 
done away. Probably nothing more revolutionary ever happened in 
the annals of the American Navy than the fact that this year's 
graduating class at Annapolis chose as its president a man who had 
come up from enlisted ranks. 

Of course there was a howl when Secretary Daniels entered on 
this reform, ibut the farther-sighted officers were with him. The howl 
came again when he abolished the seniority rule. The upper official 
strata were filled with old men, whose subordinates were old men. 
The Navy really was in the control of cliques of old men who had 
nothing to look forward to but retirement with the rank of Rear 
Admiral. They were keeping back the younger, abler and more 
modernly trained men. Not that Secretary Daniels was for ousting 
all the older officers: he had no age prejudice. But he wanted the 
merit rule to control, and under that rule certain older officers held 
their places. But able younger officers moved up, and that was what 
he was after. Thus it came that when the United States entered the 
war the American Navy was commanded by men in their prime, and 
the energy, initiative, efficiency and success with which it has performed 
its part in the war has redounded to the credit of the soundness of 
Secretary Daniels' judgment. 

IT TOOK TIME TO ACCOMPLISH IT. 

Yet he is well aware that his entire career might have eventuated 

—74— 



in a very regrettable way. If he had been relieved of his position 
before his ideals had been given time to justify themselves in practice, 
he is aware that he would have been regarded as a wild theorist with 
not enough balance to carry the practical affairs of his post. 

Or if "the man in the White House," as the Cabinet officers refer to 
the President, had shown iby the least indication that Secretary Daniels' 
undertakings were embarrassing the Administration — an event which 
Mr. Daniels would have immediately acted upon by resigning' — his 
policies would have reniained uncompleted and the great public 
indorsement which has been his could not have come to him. 

There has been a complete change in the attitude of the country 
toward Secretary Daniels, though there has never been a time when 
he was entirely destitute of defenders. But the achievements of the 
Navy, which are of a character that could never have been possible 
had the Secretary been the sort of man and official that his detractors 
portrayed him as being, have completely vindicated him. 

That is not to say — at least Secretary Daniels himself would be the 
last man to claim — that the efficiency of the United States Navy in 
this war is entirely due to the Secretary. Even at the height of the 
• storm, when everything seemed against him, he had 80 per cent of 
the officers with him, and he has always worked WITH the Navy, 
not outside of it or against it. So that, while he might have deterred 
the Navy from attaining its present standard of efficiency, and- have 
received that discredit with interest, he necessarily shares the credit 
for the finer state of affairs with the officers who worked with him. 

He names them over one by one in conversation, generously and 
even gratefully indicating the invaluable service each of them has 
rendered. He is proud of them. He is proud of being associated with 
them. 

The Navy was the first to turn a cold shoulder to civilians seeking 
appointments w"hich would give them tbomb-proof jobs. Necessarily 
such jobs exist in the administrative work of every Army and Navy, 
but Secretary Daniels early made an order that anyone who wanted 
lo work for the Navy had to enlist, and anyone who wanted a com- 
mission had to earn it. 

THE NAVY SMOKES OUT THE PROFITEERS. 

And it was Secretary Daniels who put up the initial fight with the 
profiteers. He makes a weary face when he thinks about it now, but 
he won out. Long before Government price-fixing came into vogue, 
Secretary Daniels was doing some price-fixing on his own account. 
And he had the full support of the President in doing so. 

When the coal magnates raised the price to the Navy and haggled 
when the Secretary called them to account, he simply ordered them to 
deliver the coal and he would fix the price. They did. He brought 
the big steel barons to terms, too, by the same methods. And so with 
every one of the big essentials of Naval warfare and construction — 
torpedoes, powder, copper and oil. 

One of Secretary Daniels' most noticeable characteristics is his 
excellent humor under pressure. He is still young in his mind. Many 
a subordinate 30 years old is much more aged than he — less mentally 
resilient, less responsive to the zest of life. 

And perhaps a characteristic equally as notable is that he is still 
temperamentally capable of learning. No man has crossed the "dead- 
line" of age and usefulness while he still is willing to learn. The Navy 
has taught its Secretary many things, and in return he has served the 
Navy with all his heart and mind. 

—75— 



Secretary Daniels' office overlooks the White House lawn. It is a 
very large room, so large that the Secretary has a system of his own 
ift receiving-. Vistors are ushered in in groups. The room is so large 
that several conferences may proceed at the same time without 
interrupting one another. 

A great globe stands in the center of the room, on which Secretary 
Daniels and his aides trace the movements and positions of the fleets. 
The globe is unmarked, however. Over the fireplace at the left of the 
Secretary's desk the sword of Paul Jones reposes in a glass case. On 
the massive desk is a photograph of one of the Secretary' sons, who 
is a private in the Marine Corps. 

A BUSY MORNING IN THE NAVY OFFICE. 

Two admirals come in for conference, and uniformed aides bring 
documents and messages. Business with civilians is disposed of by 
the Secretary in his walking tours around the room. There is a woman 
there, rather shabbily dressed. She talks long and earnestly to the 
Secretary, and he listens intently. The errand, whatever it is, saddens 
her, and it renders the Secretary very grave. However, as she leaves, 
a new hope seems to have sprung up in her heart. 

Secretary Daniels had seen at least 100 persons that morning, and 
as 1 p. m. came around the room was cleared, a Negro attendant 
brought in a lunch covered by a white napkin and laid it on the 
sliding shelf of the desk. And then the head of the Navy settled 
himself in a chair for a talk. 

He appears to be remarkably sturdy, and is of the unmistakable 
quizzical American type. He talks freely, frankly, man-to-man fashion. 
He had pleasant recollections of his Detroit visit and spoke admiringly 
of what he called "that newspaper temple," the new building of The 
Detroit News, which he had visited. One forgets the man's station in 
the simplicity of the man himself. He had accomplished a day's work 
already, had 11 hours of work yet to do, and yet appeared in perfect 
fettle. 

Secretary Daniels has the habit of carrying his important work 
home with him. The interruptions of the office are too numerous to 
permit of concentrated study upon problems that require very particu- 
lar decision. He works until 11 o'clock and then "shuts off," as he 
expresses it. He stays in bed eight hours whether he can sleep or not. 
It is impossible for him to follow one of his favorite rules, however — 
not to worry. He does worry sometimes, "because some things get 
one hard." And sometimes it is the worry that interferes with sleep, 
but he rests his eight hours in bed just the same. 

He knows what the men out at sea- expect of him, and what the 
men in France expect of the Navy, and what the people expect, and 
what "the Man in the White House" expects, and he is conscientiously 
trying to deliver the goods. Public opinion and naval achievements 
say that he is succeeding. 



—76— 



The Navy Was Ready to Fight! 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16.— The United States Navy has the dis- 
tinction of having entered the war before war was declared. Almost 
a month before the declaration, the Navy was arming merchantmen 
against ruthless submarine attacks and was supplying armed guards t& 
accompany ocean commerce. 

Five days before war was declared the Navy had lost a man in 
this dangerous work. 

When active hostilities seemed unavoidable, Admiral Sims was 
sent abroad to consult with the British and French admiralties. 

And when, April 6, the American Government officially declared 
that Germany had instituted a state of war against us, the Navy was 
ready. Not an hour's preparation was needed. In 28 days the first 
destroyer flotilla reported for duty in European waters. In 60 days 
the first units of the naval air force were landed in France. And on 
July 3 — in less than three months — the first contingents of the Amer- 
ican Expeditionary Force disembarked at a French port, having suf- 
fered two severe submarine attacks on the voyage across. 

The record of the Navy is that it was ready. It was not the largest 
Navy in the world; in point of weight at that time it ranked fourth; 
but in quality it ranked second to none. And every pound of weight 
was in fighting trim. 

Today the United States Navy is on duty in all parts of the world. 
It is in the war zone of Ireland, England and France. It co-operates 
with the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean Sea. It is in Asiatic waters, 
from Vladivostok to the Philippines. It patrols the American coast 
east and west, north and south, availing itself in South American 
waters of the co-operation of the Brazilian fleet. It patrols the en- 
trances to the Panama Canal, supplementing the heavy coast artillery 
defenses there. In addition it convoys the military transports and sup- 
plies that cross the Atlantic; with the British and French navies it 
controls that ocean. 

And, remarkable as indicating the strength it has added since war 
began, it has ships enough to do all this work and is continually get- 
ting more. It now maintains 250 vessels of war in European waters, 
manned by 45,000 trained American fighters, whose energy and skill 
have made the seas more unsafe for the submarine than the subma- 
rine can now make the sea for other vessels. 

FIRST CHOICE OF THE VOLUNTEER. 

When war began, the officers and enlisted men in the regular Navy 
and Marine Corps numbered 82,738. There are now over 510,000 all 
told. The Navy has been first choice for the American volunteer, be- 
cause it seemed to promise rapid transit to the scene of operations. 
Enlistments have run as high as 12,000 a week, and so great has been 
the attraction of this branch of war service that recently the Provost 
Marshal General has been compelled to call a halt on the Naval en- 
listment of men who are in the draft. 

The extensions and new facilities the Navy had to acquire to cope 
with its task and train the thousands who offered themselves, makes 
such a story as even efficient America will be astonished to hear. 

When war began the Great Lakes Naval Training Station coul'd 
acc^inmbdate 2,500 men. Today it accommodates 40,000 and is still 
growing. It is now the largest naval training station in the world; 



and its peculiar distinction is that it is situated a thousand miles from 
salt water. The Great Lakes themselves are the school yards of the 
American Navy. 

New camps and stations have been built along both coasts. The old 
Jamestown Exposition grounds and the Pine Beach properties adjoin- 
ing on Hampton Roads, Va., have been made a great fleet operating 
base — the first the Navy ever had. There is now a camp for 10,000 
men and accommodations at that point have been doubled. Here are 
being erected great warehouses, for stores and fleet supplies; piers and 
docks; barracks and recreation grounds, and when completed it will 
compare favorably with the great fleet bases of Europe. 

The San Diego Exposition grounds have been taken over and util- 
ized for naval training and supply purposes. 

Down at Gulfport, Miss., they were preparing for a big centennial 
Exposition, when the war began and made the plan inadvisable. Mis- 
sissippi tendered the grounds to the Government, and today they are ■ 
serving the Navy. 

And so at Pelham Bay and Newport and wherever the Navy had 
space to expand, facilities have been increased and the power of the 
fleets has steadily grown. 

WATCH THE NAVY GROW. 

Thirteen hundred war vessels of all types have been added to the 
Navy since April, 1917. They are in excess of 1,000,000 in total ton- 
nage. There are hundreds of American-built submarines operated by 
American Naval forces. All the destroyers the yards could turn out 
have been put into service. Mine sweepers, swift pursuit vessels, auxil- 
iary vessels of all kinds have been built and commissioned by the hun- 
dreds. And the war building program, including the ships built since 
the war began and those yet to be completed, comprise 1,000 vessels of 
all types, from dreadnaughts to Ford "Eagles" and submarine chasers. 

Great hopes are depending on the American destroyers, and they 
are giving ample assurance that the hopes are not ill-founded. The 
destroyer, contrary to the common opinion, is one of the hardest of 
all ships to Ibuild. It holds the same place in the world of naval con- 
struction that the finest Swiss watch holds in the world of watch- 
making. 

It compresses the hugest engine power and speed into the smallest 
compass.' Its 28,000 horse-power is equal to that of a dozen good- 
sized merchantmen. The United States proceeded to construct them 
on such a large scale that large new shipyards, forging and engine 
plants were neces^ry throughout the country to build and equip them. 

The largest destroyer plant in the world is at Squantum, Mass., 
built from a swamp in six months. Five keels were laid there in one 
day. Only recently a destroyer has been launched there in just three 
months after its keel was laid. At Mare Island Navy Yard a destroyer 
was launched in IVYz days after its keel was laid, and the time between 
laying the keel to putting her into commission was 70 days. 

The United States today is building more destroyers than any two 
navies possessed when the European war began, and is building them 
in from a half to a third of the time formerly required. 

The largest and fastest battle cruisers in the world — a type of bat- 
tleship which two years ago was beyond the dreams of naval con- 
structors- — are being built from American plans in an American ship- 
yard. They have a displacement of 35,000 tons, develop 180,000 horse- 
power and attain the speed of a destroyer; they will make at least 35 
knots, or 40 miles, an hour. 

—78— 



THE NAVY CARRIED THE ARMY ACROS^. 

Before it was known how extensively American military forces 
would have to enter the war, there was never a doubt as to the part 
the Navy would have to play. It has always been regarded as our 
first line of defense. It was a foregone conclusion that the Navy 
would not only guard our shores, but take a large part in the work 
of driving the submarine from the seas. It has fallen out, however, 
that the heaviest program of work cut out for our Navy has at every 
point been greatly exceeded. 

The single task of transporting troops is a colossal one, for it must 
be remembered that "the Army is the passenger of the Navy" from the 
time it marches up the gangplank of a troopship, until its disembarks 
at a "French port." The Navy has convoyed more than 1,600,000 sol- 
diers over the seas, with all their supplies, and not a single troop 
transport, convoyed by American warships, has been sunk while on 
its way to Europe. 

The Navy controls the bulk of American traffic of the sea. Where 
merchantmen are still privately operated, the Navy supplies armed 
guards with a view to conserving shipping and protecting life. 

Over the ocean vessels engaged in war work the Navy has com- 
plete control — it mans and operates the ships. Naval discipline is 
necessary to the operation of the majority of vessels in these times. 

Its work is vast and unrelenting. The qualities it requires — the 
vigilance, knowledge, courage and efficiency — are of the highest. And 
not the United States only, but all the world is now aware how proud 
its achievements have been. 
A SERVICE OF DIVERSIFIED SPECIALTIES. 

The more one knows of the Navy the higher does one's respect 
mount. Naval service is the most highly specialized of all. A battle- 
ship is a home, a city and a fortress on a single keel. It requires a 
greater variety of skill to manage than any other single piece of mili- 
tary machinery. Over 100 specific and distinct kinds of experience 
and ability are necessary to the life of a battleship. Nearly every trade 
and miany of the professions are required. Pharmacists and plumbers; 
machinists and munition experts; pattern makers and printers; 
sailmakers and gunners; experts in the care and repair of delicate 
instruments, and highly trained navigators; engineers and carpenters 
and bakers and cooks — these are a few ratings chosen at random. 

And every man in the Navy must possess a varied knowledge. He 
must know ship customs and military drill, the laws of the sea and 
the ways of the land. The officers are meteorologists and oceanog- 
raphers; they must know the ways of the sky and the sea, the hidden 
paths of the great deep, and the mysteries of the might}'- piece of 
enginery they command. They must also know many of the profundi- 
ties of human nature and how to keep it normal in the weeks and 
months that are passed between the gray sky and the gray sea, with 
danger lurking near to dart the sudden fiery death. 

The Navy fights not only on the waters and beneath the waters, 
but in the air. It maintains coastal air stations along the seaboard, and 
while destroyers hunt the submarine upon the waters, naval aviators 
hunt its shadow ibeneath the waters and make it the target of deadly 
depth bombs. 

The Navy is not entirely dependent on private enterprise for all 
its supplies, though it is obvious that only the largest use of private 
sources could maintain so massive an institution. But it operates 
many ordnance plants, some of which have always been owned by the 
Government, others of which have been requisitioned for the war. 

—79— 



One Naval gun factory employs 10,000 men. The Navy makes 
pov/der, torpedoes and mines. It makes some of its own armor plate. 
It manufactures many of its own binoculars and optical instruments, 
and has a splendid record in this important field. 

The Navy also has a number of inventions to its credit. It has 
perfected an American type of depth bomb. It has perfected a smoke-, 
producing apparatus for making smoke screens to conceal ships, 
though "vessels having the necessary gun power prefer usually to 
engage in gun duels rather than escape in a smoke screen." The 
American type of sea-mine is perhaps the most perfect in use today. 
Besides this, a non-ricochetting shell for use on submarines has been 
developed. Formerly shells were deflected by the force with which 
they struck the water; now they keep their course and go straight to 
their mark. 

INVENTIVE GENIUS OF THE NAVY. 

The Navy also is justly proud of its record in squelching the 
tendency to profiteeering. It early eliminated all middlemen's profits 
by insisting on the system of direct bidding, and it has steadily brought 
pressure tQ_ bear on production and costs to such an extent that the 
prices it pays have decreased below the points that obtained when 
the war began. 

In investigating and writing about one branch of the service, it is 
difficult to give it full credit without seeming to make it so efficient 
as to overshadow other branches. It is so when writing about the 
Army, or about any particular department of the Army. Each 
department is accomplishing so much, and the plane of each is so high 
as to leave hardly any margin for comparative emphasis. A view of 
the whole war-making activity of our GoA^ernment simply breaks the 
backs of adjectives. The facts themselves are so numerous and so 
far above ordinary conceptions of achievement that they fairly stun 
the mind with the mighty monotone of their greatness. 

But no praise is too high for the Navy. No praise is too high for 
the Army. No praise is too high for the program which American 
ideals have mapped out as to the purpose and issues of the war. They 
all combine to make one triumphant exposition of the might and soul 
of America. 

Still one's thoughts linger with the Navy. We are not far from 
the sea here. Not many miles away a submarine was operating 
recently. The high aerials, which stand like spires of filigree on the 
nearby Virginia hills are alvv^ays catching messages from across the 
waters. And up and down our coast, up and down the perilous coasts 
of the war zones, upon the seven seas, the sailors of America are 
keeping watch and ward for the homeland. 

The great gray cruisers, the swiftly darting patrols and the eagle- 
like destroyers are guarding the sea lanes, clearing them of the 
rattlesnakes of the deep. No American can think of them without a 
lifting of the heart, wishing there were a mighty sea song to celebrate 
the constancy and courage of the officers and men of the United States 
Navy. 



—80— 



iGzinsi the American Mind 



WASHINGTON, Aug. 17.— The American public has been better 
informed about all phases of the European war since its beginning than 
has any other nation. For the first three years we had more news 
from the German side than the German people themselves, and even 
now the corps of correspondents who knew Germany intiinately arc 
able to interpret to us what is going on in that country. Since our own 
entry into the war, the press of the United States has been more un- 
trammeled than any other in the world. 

We do not fully realize what this means, because we have no back- 
ground of experience of the lengths to which military censors may go. 
Americans never yet have seen their newspapers appear with entire 
columns blacked out, or left blank to show that the type has been hastily 
removed under Government order. We have witnessed no direct sup- 
pression of American publications. 

When this is considered in all its lights, it is seen to be one of the 
most interesting phases of self-government. The trend of the military 
mind — with some notable exceptions: the present Chief-of-Sta£f of the 
United States Army is one — is dead against publicity, not only' harm- 
less publicity, but any kind. This does not indicate an antipathy to the 
public, but merely one of the limitations of the specialist type of mind. 
A scientific expert often is as shy. But it must be said that the Army 
is gradually learning that an informed public is as necessary to success 
as a brave firing line — and it is the press that has taught the Army this. 
To even the score, the Army has taught the public many things. 

When war came it was immediately assumed that the United States 
would establish a military censorship over the press as other countries 
had done. No other course seemed to suggest itself. Laws were 
drafted to that effect, though they were not passed. At one time the 
President himself seemed inclined to believe Government censorship 
was the only way by which military news could be handled. Gradually 
he came to see that perhaps self government was as possible in this 
matter as in others; also he was thoroughly alive to the fact that the 
end desired was not to keep information from the people, but to give 
them as much as possible without compromising military plans. 

So that gradually the idea of censorship was modified from a com- 
plete stoppage or only an anemic flow of news to a selective system by 
which all the news not of militarj^ value to the enemy could be given 
out. 

This change really was a great victory for the American idea of self 
control. It was decided to give the press and public a chance to show 
what they could do in co-operation with the Government; and they 
have shown it so well that "censorship" is a term no longer applicable 
to intranational communication. 

GEORGE CREEL, AMERICA'S SUPER-PUBLICIST. 

One man who despite a thousand criticisms must be given credit for ' 
a large part in establishing this condition is George Creel. Mr. Creel 
had hardly any acquaintance with President Wilson when he was called 
to organize the work of a Committee on Public Information, but he 
did come to Washington strongly opposed to an iron-clad censorship. 
He believed the American newspaper would censor itself, if it were 
told how, and he further believed that the more news could be given 
out consistently with the safety of other interests, the better, 

—81— 



You have heard of George Creel, of course. Most of us have taken 
a crack at him in our time. And it is quite possible that an ove'r- 
driven man — he worked 18 hours a day the first few months — said and 
did things which, judged by a restful mind and at the distance of 1,000 
miles, seemed to deserve criticism. And besides, never having been a 
politician, Mr. Creel may have spoken with directness instead of 
diplomacy to certain persons who had power to make him uncom- 
fortable in his job. 

Mr. Creel began his work with an unfortunate incident. The first 
American transports had arrived in France on or about July 4, and a 
great Fourth of July story was launched which told of torpedo attacks 
on the way across. Everybody was excited. It was our first shipment 
of troops, our first attack, and the time was very tense. A correspondent 
in Europe eluded the censor with a story that there had been no tor- 
pedo attack, and immediately the storm broke on Creel's head. He had 
the information from the Navy Department, . but he was accused of 
dressing it up. 

THE FIRST ATTACK ON TRANSPORTS. 

The country sputtered with indignation and recrimination. It looked 
bad for Creel. The people preferred to believe that he had exaggerated 
or falsified; they preferred not to believe that an attack had been made. 
But I have read the report which was made from France by Rear 
Admiral Cleaves, July 12, 1917, which for all its bald terminology is 
far more thrilling than anything printed in the American papers of 
July 4. 

The troop transports were attacked from both sides; torpedoes 
crossed each other from starboard to port and from port to starboard, 
by the bow and astern. And not only were submarine attacks fought 
off June 22 but on June 26 also, and submarines sighted and fired on, 
June 28'. 

I have also read the report of Admiral Sims on how the correspond- 
ent's story of denial was sent to America. The correspondent, of course, 
was branded as a liar and discharged. 

But there are still hosts of people who believe that Creel's imagina- 
tion was working overtime that day in an effort to invent a good Fourth 
of July story. 

Mention should not be omitted of another service which Mr. Creel's 
insistence has rendered the people in the interests of publicity. The mili- 
tary authorities desired that casualty lists should not include the ad- 
dresses of men mentioned in them. This, of course, made for wide- 
spread anxiety in the case of thousands of homes. 

There were many Dave Joneses and many James Kellys in the 
Army, and simply to list the names without stating whether it was 
James Kelly, of Flint, or James Kelly, of Omaha, who was wounded 
or killed, was to cause unnecessary distress. The military authorities, 
principally Gen. Pershing, stood firm for the omission; but with the 
assistance of newspapers which, like The Detroit News, refused to 
print the casualty lists without the addresses, the concession finally 
was won. 

CHAMPIONS THE WIDEST PUBLICITY. 

It is not going beyond the bare fact, therefore, to say that Mr. Creel 
has been the agent of the widest publicity in this war. He believes in 
it. AH his life he has been using it. He knows what a force for safety 
and unity it is. 

As one result of this, there are more American correspondents at 

—82— 



\ 

the front today than from any other nation. When the military authori- 
ties complained that we had more war correspondents than the French 
and British combined, Mr. Creel countered with the assertion that our 
Allies' troops were not drawn from so wide a stretch of the earth's ter- 
ritory as were the Americans, and were not fighting 3,000 miles from 
home. The greater distance, the wider territory to be covered with the 
news, required more correspondents, he said, and he won his point. 

This is not to intimate in any way that the Committee on Public In- 
formation was always or ever at sword's points with the military men, 
for it must be remembered that the Secretary of War, the Secretary of 
the Navy, and the Secretary of State are members, with Mr. Creel, of 
the committee. It was merely the clash of two points of view in the 
presence of an entirely new situation, and each side, learning something 
from the other, made concessions by which the public is the gainer. 

But this is not all the work of the Committee on Public Information. 
It has assumed the task of mobilizing the mind of the country. It not 
only endeavors to open the sources of war news, but it has mobilized 
the educational forces of the country to instruct the people in the 
causes and purposes of the war. To this end it has built up an organi- 
zation which only war times and the volunteer spirit could create. 

METHODS OF INFORMING A NATION. 

It has an organization of 35,000 speakers who campaign for every 
war-making activity of the Government — the Army, Navy, Shipping 
Board, Liberty Loans, War Saving Stamps, Red Cross and other 
patriotic interests. It reaches from the greatest theater in the land to 
the school-house at the four-corners. It sends war heroes on tours and 
exhibits notable groups like the "Blue Devils" and the Belgians from 
their Russian journey. 

It originates and manages the great advertising campaigns of the 
Government, having enlisted — in some cases, where the man had private 
means, at $1 a year, in other cases at bare living salaries — the best 
writers, artists and advertising men in the nation. Free advertising 
space to the amount of $35,000,000 has been donated to the Government 
through its efforts. 

It brings out the Government motion pictures, like "Pershing's Cru- 
saders," the "Official War Review" and other such films. It shows 
pictures of troops abroad and in training at home. Its object is to 
acquaint the people with what is being done and to inform pre-dra'ft 
men of the kind of life that awaits them. 

It maintains offices for the dissemination of legitimate news in every 
capital in the world, except Berlin and Vienna, but is penetrating 
Austro-Hungar}^ at various points, and uses the air service to circulate 
statements of American aims in Germany. 

The Germans have motion pictures of American life, but they deal 
with such subjects as "Gyp the Blood," "The Disappearance of Dorothy 
Arnold" and similar sensational American crimes, giving a false im- 
pression of our country and its people. European papers seldom print 
American news, other than of crime. President Wilson's speeches made 
the first big break for America into the foreign press. Mr. Creel's 
agencies send out 1,000 words a day to every part of the world, news 
that fairly represents our life. 

Creel's organization makes the widest use of the foreign language 
press to bring the mandates and counsels of the government to those 
who never could understand them in English and he also sees that they 
print generous quantities of matter stimulative of an intelligent interest 
in American institutions which, for the most part, they are glad to do^ 

— 83— 



It is rather proud of its work among America's adopted peoples of 33 
distinct nationalities and of the extent to which they have been won to 
assist in the war of which they, too, will be the beneficiaries. 

It is censor of all the photographs of military nature that are printed 
in the United States. 

It promotes a very important work, the nature of which is to bring 
employer and employes together in closer unity for the winning of the 
war. 

It supplies material to thousands of country papers and the best 
writers in the country prepare the matter without salary. Indeed, to 
read a list of the volunteer writers for this Committee is to see literary 
America in action without a single notable exception. 

It arranges exhibits of battle trophies and war material for state 
fairs to help the people visualize the task of Government and give them 
data which will enable them to follow more intelligently the progress 
of the war. 

Besides, it prints a daily paper which has a circulation of 110,000 
copies. 

THEY BELONG TO THE VOLUNTEERS. 

And it does all this with 215 paid employes and 25,000 volunteers. _ 

With these agencies combined under one head and with one object 
in view, working ceaselessly day and night all around the world and 
with free access to any sort of help it needs from the world of litera- 
ture or scholarship or business, it is not difficult to understand how- 
together they constitute the most amazing mobilization of the public 
mind ever attempted by a democracy. 

Perhaps Mr. Creel is proudest of all about a thing he did not achieve, 
but which confirms his idea. He did not achieve the success of the 
voluntary censorship; the honor and patriotism of American newspapers 
did that. But Mr. Creel believed they could and would do it, when he 
fought that they be given the chance; and they have proved him to be 
right. The voluntary censorship is 99 per cent observed, and in the 
one per cent of failure the cause is not antagonism, but mere slips of 
judgment or accident. 

When you want to measure the freedom of a country, find out how 
free its press is. Measured by that standard the United States still is 
the freest land in the world, with a freedom self-controlled. 

And it is such a freedom as enhances our national strength, instead 
of betraying it. 

Within our borders there is freedom for everything except that 
which would destroy our freedom. 



—84— 



dustrics In quantities that would enable them all to work. And in the 
case of there being sufficient of any material for both private and war 
enterprises, the latter were given priority of service and delivery. 

But it was in very few of the prime essentials that a sufficient stock 
existed to supply both the Government and general business, and it 
was problematical how soon the rate of production could be adjusted to 
render such a double supply possible, so that another duty was forced 
on the War Industries Board, further Conservation — not only con- 
serving the stocks already on hand, but so adjusting the whole com- 
mercial process of the nation as to conserve material even when ordin- 
ary business had resumed its activity. 

The war has revealed one fact of immeasurable importance, namely, 
that our peace-time manner of living has been extremely extravagant 
and wasteful. We have simpl}^ reveled in the most lavish production 
and use of every kind of material. And not that only, but we have 
built up a business system on the principle of quick sales rather than 
of long use. We have changed styles annually and seasonally and 
sometimes oftener for the sole purpose of "speeding up" business and 
at the cost of a shameful waste of material. 

We have. wasted more in the margins of such styles and changes 
than most European nations ever used in the ordinary course of living. 

It was not a money waste; money cannot be wasted — it remains 
somewhere for use; but it was a waste of material, of the produce of 
tlie earth, of the labor and time required for that production — such a 
waste as no other nation has ever attained, and in the region of the 
irrecoverable. 

CHANGING THE PURPOSE OF PRODUCTION. 

The problem of the War Industries Board — or rather one of its many 
problems — was the reconstruction of American commercial life upon 
the principle of.Use. Things were to be made honestly for Use, for a 
long period of use, and not for a fictitious speeding up of business won 
at the cost of a waste of material absolutely terrible to contemplate in 
these clearer seeing days. 

Take agricultural implements, for example. By agreement with the 
industry, the Government has recommended the discontinuance of the 
manufacture of 3,000 types of tillage instruments alone. This will not 
affect the efficient working of the farm in the least, while it will con- 
serve millions of dollars of capital and millions of pounds of steel. 
What did these 3,000 types of implements represent? Mainly frills, 
added for the purpose of creating a new style, which in turn creates a 
new desire to possess, which in turn results in a new sale where ordin- 
arily a new sale would not have been made. The new frill gave the 
salesman a new "talking point"; it "speeded up business"; but it re- 
quired an increased use of steel, a heavier investment of capital; it in- 
volved a larger stock on hand and required larger storage and shipping 
space. 

These elements — material, money, labor and transportation space — 
are now war essentials and are not to be wasted on mere style. The 
standard type implement will serve; the salesmen can do something 
more pertinent to the winning of the war. 

There were 303 types of plows manufactured in this country. The 
number to be manufactured during the war period has been reduced to 
65. There were 300 types of drills and corn planters. The number has 
been reduced to 10. There were 107 types of harrows being made and 
sold. The number has been reduced to 44. 

Or take automobile tires. Invention and competition have been so 

—91— 



active in this special field that no less than 300 types of tires were 
manufactured in this country. The number has been reduced to 44. 

Of the hundreds of types of farm wagons made in this country, in- 
volving a ruinous use of material that stood idle awaiting sale, only five 
styles are now permitted, and these have their width of track, style of 
tire, wheel diameters and carrying capacities standardized. 

Indeed, in that word "standardized" you have one of the methods 
of conserving materials. When you standardize the styles you save 
material, you diminish the quantity of standing stock, you release 
labor to more useful purposes and you free capital to do the work of 
war winning. 

WAR STABILIZES THE FASHIONS. 

The styles of men's clothing manufactured in this country were 
"legion. Within recent years that term "style" has come to have a 
masculine connotation; there were more men's than women's styles. 
The standardization order has reduced the number of styles to a neces- 
sary few. Only 10 mod.els of sack coats are now permitted to be manu- 
factured. 

Double-breasted overcoats are now a garment of the past. Such 
trouser adornments as pocket-flaps, peg-topped legs, straps at back and 
sides are under the ban. Pleats are ordered discontinued as a waste of 
cloth. Double coats with detachable linings for civilian use are ordered 
out of the list. And the multitude of men's hat styles have been re- 
duced to a minimmn. 

Another method of conservation is education in the use of substi- 
tutes. Not that we have reached the "ersatz" stage of the Germans, 
whereby the genuine is supplanted by an imitation, but we have come 
to the point of substituting for war essentials less valuable material. . 
Blank books, for example, formerly were bound in leather; cloth is 
recommended now, because leather is a war essential. Furniture 
formerly was held together by steel fixtures; wooden contrivances are 
used now, because steel is a war essential. The old methods of manu- 
facturing metal beds required so large a quantity of steel that the num- 
ber of styles has been greatly reduced, and the size and height of the 
posts and the head and foot pieces have been cut down. 

Your merchant pastes a strip of paper at the opening of your parcel 
where formerly he used string, because cordage has become a war 
necessity; and he has cut down the number of his deliveries and has 
recommended that you carry parcels when you can, because labor and 
vehicles have become absolutely essential to winning the war. All 
these changes are directed from Washington. 

CONSERVATION OF SHIPPING SPACE. 

Not only the conservation of material and labor is sought by the 
War Industries Board, but also the conservation of shipping space. Our 
transportation problem has two ends — one concerns the extent of the 
transportation facilities themselves, the other the use we make of them. 
The problem is being solved from both ends — not only are the facili- 
ties being increased, but we are making such as we possess go further. 

It is the old problem of packing a trunk, one packer requires the 
space of two trunks, another can make one trunk space do. The war 
has simply taught us how to pack twice as much into the trunk. The 
United States has shipped 1,300,000 men to France with all their equip- 
ment and supplies in the face of conditions which made all the world 
pronounce it an impossibility. This has been done not because an un- 
expected flood of shipping dropped down from the skies, but because 
we have discovered better ways of utilizing shipping space. 

— 92 — 



The. story of methods by which the same space has been made to 
accommodate twice the former amount of material, would make a tale 
in itself. We pack men differently than we used to. We pack ma- 
terial differently, too. Not an inch of space is wasted. What can be 
shipped in "knocked down" form is shipped that way. Hollow articles 
are always shipped filled. This, with the reduction of the enormous 
number of styles of the same kind of articles formerly shipped, has 
helped our internal transportation difficulties in a wonderful way. 

American business has just one business now, just one order — WIN 
THE WAR. There is no other business with prior call. All money, 
material and labor must head up on that one primary essential — win- 
rring the war. 

How has American business met this new demand? How has it 
adjusted itself to the fundamentally changed condition? On the whole, 
very well. A few recalcitrants appeared, a few who apparently failed 
to see that profit-making was not the chief end of man. Those who 
regarded the Declaration of Independence as a business charter and 
the Constitution of the United States as a commercial contract, have 
had their eyes opened and their minds enlightened. Some also regarded 
the war as the chance of a lifetime to get rich quick; these, too, are 
chastened now. But on the whole, considering how new was the ex- 
perience and how radical the changes required, American business has 
toed the mark and has exhibited in admirable degree the Will to Win. 

The policy of the Government has been to conserve, enlarge and 
stimulate productive agencies. Neither in contract prices nor in wages 
was there to be any lack of stimulant to irttense industry. A wise dis- 
tribution was made as between civilian and military necessities — civilian 
necessities had to be met, to enable us to meet the other. The whole 
nation is at war, and the workshops and offices are part of the battle 
line. All had to be mobilized and all had to be cared for after mobiliza- 
tion. That is the wise and necessary way. 
WHAT HAPPENS IF BUSINESS BUCKS? 

But suppose a business concern refuses to see its duty. Suppose it 
prefers to work on the production of an article not essential to the life 
of the people or the prosecution of the war — what happens? Such a 
concern is simply shut off from its supplies. It cannot get steel or 
leather or oil or any other prime war essential, because it is not on 
the list of essential industries, and the materials are only sent to essential 
industries. 

Such materials as it is able to buy, it cannot have delivered, because 
the Federal Railway Administration fails to find its name on the list of 
firms to which prompt deliveries must be made to keep the war work 
moving. 

And it cannot get fuel to generate power for its machinery, because 
the Fuel Administrator does not find it on the list of industries for 
which fuel is essential. 

It is simply out of the game — out, by its own choice. It is an in- 
dustry without a country. The Big Job offers work for all, but this 
recalcitrant has preferred to stand out. No direct punishment is visited 
on it; no compulsion brought to bear. It is simply off the line of 
supply. 

No bank will lend it money, because money is mobilized, too, and is 
held for work on war essentials, nothing else. And, in due time, the 
public begin to understand its course and shun it. The slacker in- 
dustry occupies just as uncomfortable and as untenable a position as 
the slacker individual. 

Without American industry, American victory will be impossible. 
The Flag above the factory pledges to as vital a part in the battles for 
Democracy as the Flag above the soldiers in France. United, American 
industry and military strength stand invincible; divided, both fail. 

—83— 



Holding the Workshop Sector 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21.— A pessimist, or one unable to see the 
Truth because of the Facts, would have a splendid opportunity in 
this article to "view with indignation and alarm" and to cry chaos and 
calamity to his heart's content. 

He would need only this single fact to go on; that if the enemy 
nations had as much labor trouble in a year as the United States has 
had in any month since the war began, Germany would be so badly 
beaten behind her lines that her armies would collapse. 

It sounds bad, and it is bad, but it isn't the whole story. If I 
wished, I could challenge your attention to this story by an arrange- 
ment of the facts that would lend itself to red ink, exclamation points 
and all the signs of imperative alarm. But I am reduced to the neces- 
sity of asking you to peruse a story which endeavors to set forth in 
a sane and balanced way the situation as it is. 

American Labor is still a volunteer, with no compulsion save its 
own conscience. Whenever conscription of labor has been mentioned, 
the American workman has drawn back as if he mistrusted 
it. The conscription of men for the battlefield is acknowledged to be 
wise and just; the conscription of wealth is recognized as an unques- 
tionable function of the Government in times of em.ergency; but the 
conscription of labor has seemed to have a suggestion of tyranny 
about it which caused workmen to regard it with doubt. No one can 
consider the entire question from the vantage point which Washing- 
ton offers without very keenly feeling how dangerous a distrust has 
been created in our country by the industrial injustices and op- 
pressions of which the conscienceless part of capital has been guilty. 
The war has revealed the cleavage to be deep indeed, so deep that a 
common interest in a common cause, a common duty to meet a com- 
mon emregency has been a long time bridging it over. 

THE GLORY OF VOLUNTARY PATRIOTISM. 

This article is not even remotely a plea for the conscription of labor. 
My impression is that the Government wishes to avoid that if pos- 
sible. But the increasing demand consequent upon the needs of an 
Army which will go on increasing until the war is won, also conse- 
quent upon the new energy with which America is determined to push 
the war to its finish, will require no less than 25,000,000 workers all 
engaged on the Big Job and sticking to it as the soldier sticks to his 
post, until the job is done. 

That is not mere rhetoric; it is the naked truth. 

If American labor will give the Government this service in a volun- 
tary manner, that is the way the Government prefers to have it. The 
day doubtless will come when labor will lose its suspicion of what has 
been called "conscription of labor" and will see the entire question 
from the standpoint of the war; but if when that insight arrives, 
conscription will have been rendered unnecessary by the loyal and 
voluntary support of the workmen and the workshops, the glory of it 
will be very great. 

The difficulty with the American labor situation has never been dis- 
loyalty, but only disorganization. In spite of that condition the coun- 
try has got on fairly well thus far, but it could not have gone much 
longer without a change. We have only been beginning. We are now 
entering on a stage that is going to test our resources and our will, 
and organization has become imperative. That was all that conscrio- 

—94— ^ 



tion of labor ever contemplated — simply an analysis of the industrial 
man power of the nation and its organization for efficiency. The Gov- 
ernment now is seeking the same end by other means, which shall be 
described in a moment. 

IF ARMIES WERE RUN LIKE SOME SHOPS. 

To get a clear understanding of what labor disorganization has 
meant, view it under the figure of an army. Suppose we had gone 
about assembling an army as we have had to go about gathering 
industrial backing for the Army. Suppose the Army were handled as 
labor for the Army has been handled. Then we would have a condition 
something like this: men from Kansas would be traveling to Pennsyl- 
vania to get a place in Pennsylvania regiments, only to discover on 
their arrival that the Pennsylvania regiments were filled, but that Kan- 
sas regiments were crying for men. Colonels of unfilled regiments 
would be coaxing men away from fully-manned regiments, and so keep- 
ing the units always more or less disorganized. Soldiers who disliked 
their captain's manner would be quitting to go to work for some other 
captain. • Soldiers with the wanderlust would roam from place to place, 
signing up for a week or two, and then leaving for another point. Out 
west there would be more men than regiments, and down east there 
would be more regiments than men. 

How long would it take to get an army under such conditions? 
Why, there would never be an armj' at all. 

Now, the fact is that when you correct all these faults and organize 
your army on military lines, you can't even then have an army if the 
same sort of disorganization exists in the industrial army behind the 
lines. Our Army at the front requires 25,000,000 workers of all kinds 
— the industrial soldiers at home — to keep it intact. But when that 
industrial army is disorganized when it is traveling in search of jobs 
where there are no jobs, when it is quitting its jobs at the rate of 
from three times to 30 times a year, when it is slowing down produc- 
tion by these changes and absolutely stopping production by strikes, 
how is the Army out there in the trenches going to be held together? 
It simply cannot be done. 

THE VICTORY SHOT TO BE FORGED HERE. 

It cannot be too seriously said that you might as well load the 
American Army aboard transports and allow it to float unprotected in 
the war zones of the sea, as to send it to France to fight and then 
forget it while capital and labor carry on their own squabble at home. 

The war is first to be won in the workshops. The material that at 
last forces peace will have been forged before that in American work- 
shops. Victory will be delivered by American workmen to the soldiers 
overseas, and then the soldiers will "put it across." But they can't do 
it — they never can do it — until the workshop forges it and sends it. 
The final shot of victory will have been manufactured weeks before in 
America. If the manufacturing falls down, that shot will never be 
fired. This is a war of workshops. 

"What does this mean?" asks a workman. "Must we submit to in- 
dustrial injustice, to prove our loyalty? Must we permit our hard- 
won labor rights to perish, that we may not be regarded as disloyal? 
Must we keep silent about the profiteering at the top of business, and 
accept what is given us because we are Americans? Must the work- 
man sacrifice all and the capitalist nothing?" 

As I said, industrial injustice has served the nation a mean trick, 
now that war has come. There is at present sadly too little feeling 
that both Capital and Labor are banded together in a fellowship of 

—95— 



sacrifice. Rather there is a feeling that Capital is getting unjustly rich 
and that Labor ought to grab off its share while the grabbing is good. 
If Labor could be shown that Capital is sacrificing, too, there would 
be no difficulty. But a serious doubt exists in the mind of Labor 
about that. 

AS THE GOVERNMENT SEES IT. 

What are the facts as they appear here at the seat of Government? 

The first fact is that the Government does not wish labor to suffer 
or to sacrifice in any way that will reduce its efficiency. When the 
Government trains a man to be a soldier it cares for him in the very 
best way as to his food, clothing, hours of work, housing, health and 
recreation. It doesn't overwork him, underfeed him, unhealthily house 
him or assign him hours that undermine his strength and efficiency. 

Likewise, the Government wishes the workman to keep all the 
rights he has won through labor unions. It wishes his hours to be such 
as shall keep him in good productive fettle. It wishes his wages to 
yield himself and family sustenance and comfort up to the best Amer- 
ican standard, and also to give him a sense that he is being am^ply paid 
for whatever he does for the Government. These principles have been 
declared in so many words. All the Government asks of labor is to 
Produce— PRODUCE ! 

The second fact is that the Government has instituted machinery to 
correct instances where these desirable things are not forthcoming. 
While it is regarded as unpatriotic to strike merely to take advantage 
of the emergency or as a step in wage-profiteering, it is not required 
that workmen should permit themselves to be misused in the name of 
patriotism. Even under the plan which proposed labor conscription 
it never was intended to abolish the right to strike for a square deal. 
American labor has its rights and the Government wants it to have 
them and will help it to get its rights where they are withheld. But 
strikes which amount to conspiracies to hold up the supplies for the 
armies are in another category. 

The third fact is that the Government will have no profiteering at 
all, among employers or employes. A deal of harm has been done by 
the mistaken notion of the extent to which profiteering has obtained 
in this war. There has never been so little profiteering in our history 
as in this war. It began and ended with the contracts between Eu- 
ropean governments and American firms before the United States de- 
clared war. And what profiteering has existed in strictly American 
war work has been mostly among people who obtained contracts and 
sold them to the manufacturer for a price — contract brokers, as they 
were called. The broker was the profiteer; the manufacturer was the 
"goat." 

PROFITEERING IS A FORM OF TREASON. 

But the contract broker is no more; the Government is fixing prices 
according to the cost of production of each contract. This cost in- 
cludes a wage sufficient to make the workman feel like giving his best 
to the job, and a reasonable profit to the employer. In this series of 
articles I think I have made it plain that profiteering on Government 
contracts is largely a thing of the past. The Government is nobody's 
"goat." 

The National War Labor Board has taken "an attitude firmly op- 
posed to unjust profits on the part of capital and unreasonable demands 
on the part of labor. ... It reaffirms, however, the principle that 
the worker is entitled to a wage sufficient to sustain himself and family 
in health and reasonable comfort, and restates the purpose of this board 

— 96 — 



to apply the principle in each of the cases that come before it for de- 
cision." 

The same board "declares the war to be an interregnum in which 
the wheels of industry should turn only in the common cause and for 
common ends, neither for unjust profits on the part of capital or 
unfairly inflated wages on the part of labor." 

Now, the disorganization of labor of which I spoke 'does not refer 
to internal organization, such as unions and associations, but to the 
relation of American labor to essential war industries. We have the 
25,000,000 workers which- the war will require — we have them all right 
— if we hadn't we would have been in hot water before now — but we 
haven't them in place. 

It is like having an army, but not having it where it is needed. 
Our industrial army is here, but it is not organized, and it is not at the 
front, where it is needed, that is, on war work. 

WHERE THE TROUBLE HAS BEEN. 

What have been the chief faults of the situation, so far as the 
individual worker is concerned? After we have dealt with the indi- 
vidual we can then see how it affects the system. 

First, the worker has neither known what war work was nor where 
it was being done. He has "heard" things on the street, he has ap- 
plied where he thought his labor would benefit the Government, but 
he has not known definitely. Now, his lack of information on this 
point is unnecessary. If he has a job now and doesn't want to quit 
(it is patriotic to STICK TO YOUR JOB!) he can register with the 
United States Public Service Reserve, stating his trade and qualifica- 
tions, and will be notified when his services can be used to advantage 
on Government work. This registration involves no compulsion. When 
his notice comes he can go or stay, as he likes. He will be given 
as much information about the job and the place as is obtainable. 
There is no fee, no obligation. 

If he has no job, or, having one, wants to get into Government 
work immediately, he can apply at the United States Employment 
Service, where he may be assigned to work immediately on the con- 
ditions just stated. 

Second, the tendency of men to change their jobs has been a great 
hindrance to war industry. Enough men changed their jobs last year 
to equal in effect TWENTY DIVISIONS OF SHOCK TROOPS 
PRESENTED TO THE KAISER. The men didn't intend to help the 
Kaiser when they quit, but that is what they did by hindering the 
United States. 

When a man quits his job it is an individual strike, and strikes al- 
vy-ays tie up production. It costs in production from $50 to $200 every 
time a man changes his job and a new man is put on. It throws the 
Government back five rifles, or 1,000 cartridges or 50 hand grenades, or 
eight uniforms, or 10 pairs of shoes, according to the job that the man 
quits. The 30,000,000 unskilled workers in the country held last year 
about 150,000,000 jobs. You can see what loss and confusion that 
amounted to. That is why it is said: IT IS PATRIOTIC TO STICK 
TO YOUR JOB. 

Get the right job by applying through the Government agency, and 
then stay with it, working a full day every day. That is what Produc- 
tion requires. 

Third, the competition of employers for men has been a source of 
loss and confusion. There are enough men in the country, but not 
always enough men in the city where the work is being done, and so 
employers compete with each other for men. The result is that no fac- 

—97— 



tory organization is stable. One Detroit employer finds himself 500 
men short every morning; they have been coaxed away on one pretext 
or another. This slows up production. 

The first cause of loss, the roaming around of men, will be obviated 
if men will apply to the Government Employment Agency, and not 
trust their own partial information. The second will be obviated if 
men will understand the patriotic implications of the day's work. And 
the third has been abolished by the Government, through prohibiting 
employers from hiring men in the old haphazard way. 

WORKERS FOR JOBS— JOBS FOR WORKERS. 

What the Government wants to do, Mr. Workman, is to avail itself 
of your skill and experience where it will best help win the war. And 
that is where every loyal American wants to use his skill. 

"But will it involve my leaving my home town?" a man may ask. 

Probably not. There was a time when most of the war work was 
done in the East. Now, however, there is a broad belt north of Wash- 
ington and extending past New York, where no new war contracts are 
being let because the factories are loaded up. The war work of the 
Government is now spreading fanlike over the entire country. A little 
while ago Detroit was the western frontier of that work; then Chicago 
began to be included; now it is reaching as far as St. Louis. The Far- 
ther West virtually is untouched as yet. The West may be called on 
to give labor to the states farther east. 

The policy of the government is not merely to transport men to 
where the war industries are located, but also to locate \yar industries 
where the men are to be found. No man has to leave his home if he 
does not desire, but if a man has no family responsibilities or for any 
other reason would be willing to move to help meet a labor shortage 
in another state, this is arranged for him. Those who prefer to stay 
in the city of their residence are put to work in that vicinity. Some 
moving may be necessary to man all the work and work all the men, 
but there is no compulsion about it. 

The result of this will be to put the Government in touch with the 
skill it needs, and to put the skill in touch with the job where it can 
best serve. What less can an American workman do, if he wouldhelp 
his Government, than to register for war work, and to work with a 
will to support the boys who are on the Other Side? 

MONEY USELESS WITHOUT LABOR. 

You can raise billions of dollars, but that will not drive one rivet in 
a ship, nor fashion one uniform, nor forge one gun, nor make one shell. 
It takes labor to do that — careful, skilful, honest labor. Your money can 
only support the workman while he is making the material of war and 
the soldier while he is using it. 

Labor here and in the trenches, labor everywhere, is the only thing 
that will win the war — the labor of man and the bounty of nature. 

Armies no longer "live on the country" unless they repeat the hor- 
rors of Belgium; they live on what is sent from their home countries; 
and it is labor that makes and sends that support. 

If you get your job through the Government Employment Agency, 
you are sure of serving in this cause of the common people everywhere. 

When the war is won, labor will have won it with all its demands, 
for labor v/ill have won the war, both here and in the trenches. If we 
lose the war, then a military autocrat from overseas will settle our labor 
troubles for us in his own way, and that will put progress centuries 
back. 

It is incumbent on Capital as well as Labor — there can be no par- 

—98— 



tiality of emphasis in this insistence — to merge all differences in the 
one duty that confronts us all. Over in Russia they talked and talked 
about their labor and capital difficulties and while they were talking 
the Germans walked through the lines. That must not happen here. 

It is obvious, of course, that if a goodly portion of American labor 
had not stuck by the job, we could not have gone as far as we have. 
But even at that we have done less than half of what we might have 
done. At one time within the year the Government could not spend 
one-fourth of the money it had for war purposes, because the war ma- 
terial had not been produced. There was nothing to buy. We have 
astonished the world by breaking the world's records, yet there is one 
man in Washington who knows we have not done half of what we 
could, or of what we shall do when we organize industrially under the 
call that went forth, Aug. 1. The very plenitude of our resources saved 
us in the midst of confusion. The organization of our resources will 
render us invincible — not only to win the war, but shorten the war by 
winning it with a rush. 

EVERY PAIR OF HANDS COUNTS. 

Labor always has been loyal. Where its disorganization has hin- 
dered the country it was because the individual workman did not al- 
ways feel that, in the great mass, he personally counted. A sufficient 
number of men thought that way to make things pretty shaky. 

Everybody counts. Skilled men and unskilled men count. Thous- 
ands of college professors and 250,000 boys are working in the harvest 
fields of the United States, because they have been made to know that 
every man jack of them counts. 

The coal miners of the United States, fewer in number than ever 
before, are turning out more coal than was ever mined in the nation's 
history, because they have come to know that every pick counts. They 
have given up their holidays and vacations. Old miners who retired 
by reason of age have come back to work to help the boys over the sea. 

If I had desired, if it had seemed the more useful course, I could 
have devoted the entire articles to instances like that. But the other 
thing is so much bigger — the need for seeing where we have fallen 
down, the need for co-operation with the Government, both employer 
and employe, through the new plans which went into effect Aug. 1, 
is so great — that I felt I could best serve the reader who wants to help 
by putting these facts before him. 

If you are at work on things not essential to the life of the people 
or the supply of the armies, register with the U. S. Public Service Re- 
serve, so that they may know where you are and what you can do. 

If you are at liberty and are seeking a job, go to the U. S. Employ- 
ment Service, and they will place you. 

Employers: don't gum up the work by hiring men on your own 
hook, not knowing what government .work you may be disorganizing 
thereby. If your line is non-essential to the war, don't hesitate to give 
up your workmen to war service. You have let your son go to the 
war; you will let your workmen go where they can serve war pur- 
poses. 

When both workmen and employers obey the Government and work 
through its agencies, our industrial system then will begin to boost this 
war with conquering and unanimous strength. 

"NOT JUST HATS OFF TO THE FLAG— 
, BUT SLEEVES UP FOR IT!" 



-99- 



Mobilizing National Morality and Religion 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22.— There will be a military history of this 
war written; indeed, it is being written now and from day to day by 
men appointed to that work. There will also be written a medical and 
surgical history of the war; experts are writing that by daily stages 
even now. Other histories are being written dealing with transporta- 
tion and supply, organization and classification, and the numerous other 
aspects of the life of an army in action. But if there could also be 
written a religious history of the American Army, it would surely 
disclose an undercurrent of life that never gets into the dispatches. 
The training of the National Army not only has effected the physi- 
cal renewal of the young manhood of the nation, but its moral and 
spiritual renewal as well, and the influence of it has gone out to sober 
and deepen the mind and spirit of the entire nation. 

It was only a little thing, but I had never seen it before, and it will 
serve as a small sidelight on what has just been said. One evening 
on Pennsylvania avenue, in the vicinity of the statue of Ben Frank- 
lin, Printer, a Salvation Army corps was holding its outdoor meeting. 
The members beat their drums and sang their hymns and soldiers 
who were promenading the avenue stopped to listen. I counted 50 
soldiers in the crowd. 

Presently the Salvationists dropped to their knees on the pavement 
to pray. Instantly, as if an order had been given, every soldier's field 
hat came off, and every soldier assumed the position, "Parade rest." 
Those who had been lounging aginst Ben Franklin straightened up, 
those who had been leaning on a chum's shoulder stood erect as if a 
genera!l were passing. It was done with an alert movement, as if it 
were the only thing, the right thing to do. And then, slowly, shame- 
facedly, one by one, a few civilians followed suit. I had never seen a 
street crowd at a Salvation Army round-up uncover in such large pro- 
portion before, and it was the soldiers' act that" forced it. 

Next day I mentioned the incident to one of the officers in the 
Department, and this is what he said: 

SOLDIERS RESPECT SALVATION ARMY. 

"Six months ago probably not one of those men would have thought 
of doing that. But they get a new view of such things in the camps. 
Besides, the church is standing by them in such a manner that they 
are getting a new light on the church. As to their respect for the 
street-corner Salvationists, that is easily explained. The boys have 
heard from returned men what the "S. A.," as they call it, is doing 
overseas. It is a fact that of all the organizations at work for the 
soldier's welfare over there, the Salvation Army has won the deepest 
respect of all. Strange, isn't it? But it is true. What you saw on the 
avenue was partly reverence for the act of prayer and partly admira- 
tion for the Salvation Arm.y." 

It did sound strange. So, when in search of material for this arti- 
cle, I came to the offices of the Federated Churches of Christ in 
America, I mentioned the incident again. And to my greater amaze- 
ment, the official churchmen there said the same things as the Gov- 
ernment officer, but a little stronger. These official churchmen have 
charge of the more formal work of religion in the Army, the selection 
of chaplains and the like, but they awarded the highest palm to the 
Salvation Army. Frankly, I had expected a very different set of facts. 



Religion and morality are not outside ideals which are merely tol- 
erated by the military authorities out of respect for the notions of the 
civilian population; they are regarded as integral parts of the Army 
system. 

For the first time in history a great army has been organized on 
the principle that millions of unmarried men can and will live the 
strictest moral life. There is absolutely not one shred of provision 
made for anything else. In other armies, what is euphoniously termed 
"human nature" is distinctly provided for — Kipling's assertion, "Sin- 
gle men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints," is taken for grant- 
ed. The assertion may be true of the old-time barracks life, with its 
leisure and its rum, its lack of purpose and its triviality — but it can 
not be true of single men in the stiffest training ever devised and fight- 
ing a world war for a spiritual issue. 

MILITARY LIFE BASED ON PERSONAL MORALITY. 

There is a minority amongst the older officers of the Army who 
still believe the soldier must be a high-strung, immoral young devil 
to amount to much, but that idea does not control the American Army 
today. Everything is against it. Our military system is built on the 
assumption that the soldier will live a high type of personal life, as 
regards both physical and moral cleanliness. The regulations im- 
pose an almost monastic regime. And the soldiers thrive upon it. 

The Commission on War Training Camp Activities is the principal 
official safeguard of the soldier's ordinary morals. It cleans out, by the 
aid of other agencies, all untoward influences in the camp zone. It cap- 
tures and detains all persons with designs upon the soldier's morals. 
The lewd woman is regarded by war regulation as a potential enemy 
agent, and is treated accordingly. Social gatherings of low tone are 
made impossible. 

The surreptitious booze traffic is tirelessly hounded. , 

These are the negative parts of the work. The positive work pro- 
vides a high tone of amusement, recreation and social opportunity 
for the soldier. Thousands of soldiers are, for the first time, coming 
into familiar contact with the higher standards of American social life; 
they are being welcomed into the American home; they are given a 
chance to sense the atmosphere of true American domesticity. The 
opportunities provided for their improvement are greater than the op- 
portunities for evil taken away from them. 

In all this work, of course, the voluntary service of the American 
church — Christian and Jewish— is the main force. The response of- 
the American church in all its branches to the call of the Govern- 
ment has been phenomenal. The church has a stake in the armies — 
witness the service flags that adorn our edifices of worship! The church 
has been one of the most effective recruiting stations for this war. It 
has been an efficient agent of the Food Conservation and the Liberty 
Loan campaigns. Much of the Red Cross work of the country centers 
in the churches. The contribution of the churches bore the largest part 
of the burden of placing Y. M. C. A. and K. of C. huts in every train- 
ing camp, in America and overseas. And it was the energy supplied by 
the churches that enabled the War Department to avail itself of the 
agencies which generate moral influence in the ranks of the armies. 
It is simply impossible to overestimate what the church has meant to 
the Government in this war. 

The Government's part is in directing these agencies of moral in- 
fluence. They are present in the Army and Navy, not on mere suf- 
ferance aijd tolerance, but on invitation and order. The Government 

—101— 



cares greatly that the work should be done, and cares greatly how it is 
done. 

Hence, we have the training camps of the chaplains. 

PUTTING THE CHAPLAIN THROUGH HIS PACES. 

If people imagine that a chaplain is a good-natured clergyman of the 
slippered variety who go about offering Dorcas Society trivialities to 
the soldiers, a visit to a chaplain's training camp would dissipate that 
notion. 

Every chaplain is a clergyman, but not every clergyman can be a 
chaplain. To be a chaplain a man must care a lot more about the 
soldier than he does about himself. He must be able to stand a lot of 
work with a minimum of meditation. He must care a lot more about a 
man than about a creed. He must, to quote an army officer, be a "he- 
man," with something of a sage's insight, something of a guardian 
angel's patience and something of a father's sympathy. And these 
must not exist merely in his intention; they must be evident in his 
personality. 

There is no clergyman too distinguished, too learned, too experi- 
enced in the diagnosis of spiritual ailments and in the cure of souls — 
there is no pastor too good to be a chaplain. Only the best can carry 
the job through. 

Ministers who serve as chaplains are going to be different men 
when they conie back. I saw a number of reports which indicate that 
many of these men never will return to the pastorate — it isn't big 
enough for them. There is a great deal of discussion among stay-at- 
homes as to the effect this war will have on religion, but the only 
tangible angle from which this question can be considered is the un- 
doubted effect the war is having upon the view of the church held by 
ministers who have had army experience. 

And why not? How few ministers are free from the complaint that 
men don't go to church — and here the chaplain is appointed to a par- 
ish of 1,200 men all at once! Twelve hundred young men, between 21 
and 31, who are going to be the world-makers of the next two decades! 
Was there ever such an opportunity? Is there anything like that op- 
portunity at home? 

But to get back to the training of the chaplains. Under the new law, 
which allots a chaplain to every 1,200 men, or two chaplains to a regi- 
ment, there are needed for the present army 1,666 men. For every 
additional million soldiers raised, there will be needed another 833 
chaplains. There are only 800 chaplains in the service now, and 550 
more are being asked for — 150 of whom are in sigTit. The age limit is 
21 to 45. The qualifications are, first, the approval of the Federated 
Council of the Churches of Christ, if the candidate is a Protestant, or 
the approval of the Catholic Bureau for Army and Navy chaplains, if 
the candidate is a Catholic; or the approval of the Jewish Welfare 
Board, if the candidate is a Jew. This means that the candidate must 
be an ordained minister, in good standing, and qualified to pass the 
moral, mental and physical tests prescribed by the regulations. Out 
of 1,600 points, his educational attainments count 400; his experience as 
pastor and teacher counts 500; the other points are distributed amongst 
lesser matters. 

REV. PRIVATE WORKS HARD. 

When accepted the candidate must enlist for five weeks' training at 
a Training School for Chaplains conducted by the War Department. 
The school at Camp Taylor, Ky., is unique in that it is the only school 
in existence exclusively for chaplains. The chaplains' school is not a 

— 102 — 



theological seminary. Obviously it could not be since the recent en- 
rollment at Camp Taylor showed Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, 
Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Jews, Lutherans and 
Disciples of Christ in attendance. 

Something of the unity that obtains there may be seen in the fact 
that the last class to graduate chose its only Catholic priest as its 
president. But this tendency toward unity of religious effort is ob- 
servable everywhere in the army. In the early days of Camp Custer, 
a Protestant worker who slept in a "Y" hut used to get up at day- 
light to let a Catholic priest use his bedroom in which to hear con- 
fessions. 

The Reverend Private — for that is his rank, be he bishop or itin- 
erant preacher — is treated to military discipline from the moment he 
sets foot in camp. He gets up by bugle at 5:30, douses himself in cold 
water, jumps into his uniform and hikes to the parade ground where 
he puts in IS minutes of stiff "setting up" exercises, after which he 
takes a half mile run to prepare him for breakfast. When mess call 
sounds, he takes his press tin and forms in line to get his "chow," 
after which he washes his dishes, makes up his cot and "polices" or 
cleans up his barracks. He does what he is told, as any private sol- 
dier does, and if he feels it beneath his dignity, he is disciplined. He 
is refused permission to leave camp, or something like that. It doesn't 
matter what his rank in the church; in the training camp he is a 
private. If he is a learned man and thinks the studies too trivial for 
him, the regulations say that he is "not temperamentally suited to the 
present emergency." 

From 7:30 to 9:30 the Reverend Private sweats through a heavy 
drill period under military officers. From 9 to 10 he studies military 
law; in his position as chaplain he will come in contact with soldiers 
who have violated military law, and his natural sympathy will in- 
cline him to to advise or plead for them. His knowledge of military 
law will enable him to know what is proper in the circumstances. From 
10 to 11 he will study international law. From 11 to 12 he will study 
military organization — he will be given a knowledge of the army as 
a whole. 

And then, from 12 to 1:30 he has nothing to do but feed, wash his 
dishes and do any of a score of things that may be waiting. 

From 1 to 2:30 he will study what is politely known as equitation- — 
it really means learning how to ride a horse without hanging on to 
his neck and sliding around in the saddle, and how to sit up straight 
when every muscle aches with soreness. After this he learns the art 
of being valet to the horse, the technic of the curry-comb and brush 
and other stable arts. 

There is a hiatus in the program, between 2:30 and 3, which is grant- 
ed, perhaps to permit the Reverend Private to air his clothes and get 
the kinks out of his legs. 

THE COURAGE OF CHAPLAINS. 

From 3 to 4 he studies military hygiene and first aid. This means 
a number of things; for one it means that the chaplain will sometimes 
be out in the front where the shells are bursting and men are bleeding, 
and he has got to know what to do. He will have wounds to bind, 
morphine to administer, stimulants for the fainting, as well as consola- 
tion for the dying. 

And if any reader thinks the chaplain hesitates about going "over 
the top" with his men, he ought to read the records of chaplains in 
this war. It is the bravery of chaplains, and the sacrifice of their lives 
sometimes, that is making religion the reality it is at the front. 

— X03— 



From 4 to 5 he learns Tiow to guide the recreations and amuse- 
ments of the men.' First thing back from the trenches, or first thing 
after a fight, it is up to the chaplain to lift the gloom that comes 
from the thought of dead and wounded friends. The fight is over, 
but his work isn't done. 

From 5 to 6 the chaplain-candidate studies other things, so that he 
will be able to talk authoritatively about them to the men who didn't 
know before — subjects never used as sermon topics. 

And then from 8 to 10 in the evening he is busy on the day's work 
just done, or the work to follow the bugle which sounds the reveille 
just seven and a half hours after it sounds "taps." 

And this goes on every day in the week except Sunday. The can- 
didate is expected to preach two or three times Sunday, and the au- 
thorities scout round to hear him. When does he prepare his ser- 
mons? When does he meditate? Well, on Saturdays he has nothing 
to do but a three-hour march' — a mere 12 or IS miles in the dust and 
heat — with a little "mounted practice" on the side, and then he is 
turned loose to become as much of a clergyman as he can for the 
morrow. But there is no "blue Monday" following Sunday's exertion. 
At 5:30 a. m. on Monday the bugle blows him up again, and the work 
begins all over, becoming increasingly difficult as the course proceeds. 

JOY! HE'S NOW REV. LIEUTENANT. 

But when he gets through — when he is worn down to fighting trim, 
and feels his muscles — when he talks out like a man reborn — when 
the colonel reads his name from a paper and he is no longer a Rever- 
end Private, but a Reverend Lieutenant, with a commission in the 
Army of the United States — then it's "O, joy, O, boy! where do we 
go from here?" and it's — 

"The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, 

The drums rum-tumming everywhere; 

And we won't come back till it's over, over there." 

And then the last night, before he departs for his station, it's the 
old doxology: 

"Praise God from Whom all blessings flow." 

Presently the soldiers begin to write home, "the chaplain's a good 
guy — he lent me five francs when I was broke." And the chaplain 
writes back: "I'm living for the first time in my life. I don't see how 

1 can ever go back to the old little round of things." 

And what is he over there? He is anything and everything. He is 
censor of letters, sometimes. He is the amanuensis of wounded sol- 
diers. He writes to the folks back home the things their boy said be- 
fore he went behind the veil, and how he felt about it all and about 
them. He tells them where the grave is. 

He writes a mother or a sweetheart how well their lad is coming 
on in the hospital, and how proudly he has done himself. He goes 
over with fellows who are afraid — afraid with that fear which is the 
worst in the world, the fear of being afraid, and he shows them they 
are as brave as any. He follows on and stops with the men who drop, 
and sees them cared for. In rest billets he sets up classes and little 
lecture courses to employ the time. His spoken sermons may be few 
and short, but his life is eloquent — and, besides the soldiers under- 
stand life better than discourses. 

But what does it all accomplish in a religious way? Anything defi- 
nite? The reports which come back are marvelous in the eyes of any- 
one who has a sense of these things. From Bishop Brent, of the 
Philippines, whom Pershing has appointed senior staff chaplain, as- 

—104— 



sisted by the Rev. Paul Moody, son of the great evangelist, and Fr. 
Doherty, to the least lieutenant-chaplain, the reports are marvelous. 
Pershing himself, since going across, has joined the church of his 
wife's faith. He crossed to London to do it. 

THE DEFINITE SPIRITUAL RESULTS. 

Old chaplains in the Army are amazed at the change which has 
come over things. The new chaplains, who have come from com- 
fortable churches, never saw the practical power of religion before as 
they see it in the Army. By the thousands do boys line up — or "en- 
list," as they say — on the right side. "Never a day passes," writes a 
chaplain, "that from six to 20 boys do not seek me out to settle the 
matter with them." 

The religious services on troop ships crossing the seas never have 
been described, and those who see them hesitate to describe them, be- 
cause words have their limits — and religious words, especially have 
been worn too thin. On every battleship in the United States Navy 
there is "The Church on the ship." 

The chaplains do not take the credit. Work the church has done 
at home for boys who left it when they left the Sunday school — that 
is given the credit. This new Army comes out of the homes of 
America. It needed to be told nothing. It knew what the churches 
taught. But it drifted. The new moral fiber created by the demands 
of a time of war, the new and nearer view of the fundamental realities, 
brought it face to face with the moral imperative in a way nothing 
else could have done and the Army is responding. 

The religion of the soldier is different from the religion of the peo- 
ple at home. It is spiritual without being particularly pious. It is a 
deepened sense of the invisible reality, morfe than an increased rever- 
ence for the visible garments of religion. It is direct, as between 
Deity and humanity, rather than by ecclesiastical organization. The 
church in its more austere aspects is not present in the Army, but re- 
ligion is. The soldiers are not psalm-singing devotees, but, as Bishop 
McCormick puts it, "they have bet their life on God," and that is the 
sum of faith. 

This article has not mentioned all the agencies at work— the 
Y. M. C. A., the K. of C, the J. W. B., the Salvation Army, the various 
women's organizations that help the soldier keep in touch with the 
sweet sanity of life; it has dealt only with those agencies in which 
the Government by assuming full responsibility and control, has put 
its seal upon moral and religious work for the soldier It is a great 
thing to know that the Government has done this and that the Amer- 
ican soldier has responded with such amazing frankness and sincerity. 



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